So how the heck did Doomlings even come to be? 

All things considered - we are still very early on in our journey. If we're going back to the beginning beginning, it all started in 2019 when Justus Meyer and his brother Andrew were on vacation with their family. They were joking about coming up with a game that would satiate not only their family (primarily non-gamers) - but themselves as well (lifelong gamers). They didn’t know it back then, but they were about to stumble into the adventure of a lifetime…

The funny thing is that Doomlings was never supposed to be a real game. Originally, it was a fun hobby that Justus and Andrew worked on; a special project intended to bring the two closer together. (The Brothers Meyer live 1700 miles apart.) Then the pandemic hit, and the world shut down. Justus suddenly had nothing but time to throw himself into this new world; finding himself unemployed like a vast majority of us that year. 

And so, with what seemed like an endless amount of free time, Justus got to work on Doomlings - he embraced his obsession with the end of the world and began building out hundreds of little unique characters. He even taught himself how to create digital art specifically for his new project! 

While he busied himself with creating the cards, on the other side of the country Andrew became the game's "rules lawyer" and worked tirelessly on the mechanics - often playing every player's hand, in hundreds of game scenarios - by himself. By this point they realized they were onto something. Doomlings needed to be brought to the world. So they reached out to their friends Eric McCoy and Chris Svehla to help them out.

Chris lent his comedic wit to the flavor text of each card, and Eric dove into researching this Kickstarter platform he'd heard so much about, and became the game's campaign manager. 

As Eric researched, he learned that thousands of creators take to the Kickstarter platform every year to crowdfund their ideas - whether they're games, technology, restaurant concepts, films - you name it! If there is a creator with a good idea who needs funding - you'll probably find them on Kickstarter.

Seeing that there was such a strong gaming presence in the Kickstarter community, Eric found three gamers and hired them to be the "Bullet Dodging Dept." for Doomlings. Jim Freeman, Patrick Jones, and Christine Petrovich's sole mission was bringing their experience as gamers themselves to support the backers of Doomlings. Additionally, the team was fortunate enough to have the consulting expertise of Gregory Frank, who'd successfully launched more than 125 successful crowdfunding campaigns. 

With the team assembled and a Kickstarter Launch Date set for March 2nd, 2021 - the group dove headfirst into the board game community on social media and sent the prototype to over 70 reviewers around the world!

The Doomlings Community Group on Facebook was born, and suddenly, Doomlings swept through the gaming community like wildfire. People were just as excited about Doomlings as we were!

They were crocheting Doomlings; they were baking Doomlings; they tuned in to our livestreams to play along with us! With the gaming community in our corner when Launch Day arrived, Doomlings was funded in 49 minutes.

To say we were floored by the outpouring of support is the understatement of the century. By the end of the Kickstarter campaign we had 10,000+ backers from 80 countries around the world supporting us. Doomlings finished its campaign in the top tenth of 1% of Kickstarters of all time.  The next day, the pre-orders started rolling in. Three weeks later, Doomlings had grossed a million dollars.

(Eric, Chris, and Justus in the final hour of the campaign. They promptly collapsed after this photo was taken.)



This is just the beginning. We have a long way to go on this journey, and there are new and exciting things we learn every day. We plan to expand Doomlings into more content and spaces, as far as our imaginations will take us! But for now, we are singularly focused on one goal: delivering our pre-orders to our ground floor backers, YOU.

As always - we want to thank you for your support of our little game. We wouldn't be here without you - and again, the journey is just starting.

There's a lot of work we need to do between now and when we ship the games in December, and we intend to keep you updated every step of the way. Below is a timeline where we go from here!

In closing, we will continue to update you every month, as we make progress. But, if you have any questions in the meantime, please don't hesitate to reach out to us at info@doomlings.com. Thank you again, for joining us on this adventure. Here's to the next chapter together...

Best,

Justus, Andrew, Eric, Chris, & Team Doomlings!