The “Know Your Ante? Trivia!” game has been in development for more than a year and includes original trivia questions written by a writer and went through multiple rounds of playtesting.
Lifelong lovers of trivia
The two game makers, who live in Springfield and graduated from Kenton Ridge High School in 2017, have always been big trivia fans, Zink said.
He said they went to Buffalo Wild Wings every Wednesday for trivia night while in high school, were on the high school’s trivia team and competed in WOSU’s In the Know, which was a high school quiz show. Most recently, they have been attending Station One’s trivia night.
“The skeleton of the idea came to me as a shower thought. I thought of the core mechanic: depending on how comfortable the player is with the category rolled, they can choose the difficulty level of the question asked. The chosen difficulty level then determines the risk and reward," Zink said.
In January 2025, Zink pitched the game idea to Stickford as Zink knew he didn’t want to build the game alone and that Stickford brought strengths he didn’t have.
From there, the game continued to evolve.
Building the game
The two agreed early on it would be a Vegas-style theme with wagering and a risk-reward nature, Zink said. Once a category is determined by a dice roll, players choose between easy, medium, hard and expert, which are represented as Jack, Queen, King and Ace cards. They also added Hedge Cards, which act as power-ups that players can buy or earn and use before a questions is asked.
After this was the planning phase, which they originally came up with a four month timeline.
Phase 1 included finishing the prototype of the game, play a few games, contact possible manufacturers to estimate how much money they’d need to produce the game, make revisions, follow up with manufacturers, start planning the Kickstarter campaign with visuals, description, script, camera and location.
Phase 2 included finishing and posting the Kickstarter campaign, start planning to write more questions and make plans with manufacturers.
“Looking at it now, it was a little ambitious to think we could have that quick a turnaround in making a board game while also working full-time jobs and having separate responsibilities. That said, we’re incredibly proud of how much progress we’ve made,” Zink said.
During the phases, the two realized they needed a professional trivia writer because they wouldn’t be able to come up with 2,000 questions in the final game on their own. They were able to find a trivia writer Kennita Leon online to join their team.
Finally, they added Conner Reed, a member of their high school trivia posse, who is their resident board game expert and kept the team in line with the mechanics and helped make sure the game would work.
Once the questions were written and rules finalized, they created the physical prototype and found a manufacturer in Washington state to print the first edition of the game. Once Zink and Stickford received the prototype, they conducted extensive playtesting with a wide range of groups to make sure the mechanics were balanced and fun.
“We were really happy with how the graphic design turned out, as it captured the look and feel Mark and I originally envisioned,” Zink said. “Across all of these sessions, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive.”
The next step was to plan the video for the crowdfunding campaign, which they filmed in August in Zink’s garage.
“The sweltering garage, the bright lights and the lack of airflow were brutal for Mark and everyone else in the video. However, even with the grueling conditions, there was an excited energy among all of us that day, and I think it comes through in the video we created,” he said.
How to support the game
Backing a project on Kickstarter is a way for people to pre-order the game by contributing money and helping to fund the initial production, Zink said. Backers are people who contribute money to the campaign’s funding goal of $6,000.
With Kickstarter, Zink and Stickford have to reach the funding goal by the end of the campaign on Feb. 13 to more forward. If the goal is reached, they collect backers’ pledges and use those funds to manufacture and deliver the game to them. If the goal isn’t reached, no one is charged. If this happens, Zink said they’d still be able to move forward with producing the game independently, but it would no longer be tied to the Kickstarter campaign.
For now, the only way to get the game is to back it on Kickstarter. Once the campaign ends and the game is produced, they plan to sell it more broadly through the website.
Those interested in backing the game or for more information about it, can visit https://tinyurl.com/yw8tx6f2. Right now, knowyourante.com functions primarily as a landing page to direct people to the Kickstarter campaign.
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