Origin Story

It all started with a group of children. Strange for a game about death, but, it did…

from the creator of Morbid Curiosity - Kimberley Mead

I was working at a grief center, facilitating a children’s group and was struck with the remarkable difference the kids approached talking about death. They asked all sorts of questions that made many adults adults squirm. They sang about decomposition, asked what makes a person dead, and tried to make sense of it all. They encouraged and supported each other exploring the fine line between life and death in a way that adults had forgotten. The kids were simply… curious.

I knew I wanted to create something that didn’t feel like “therapy”. As we do when we are young, the kids used play to explore this difficult and sometimes dark topic. I didn’t know what “it” was at first. I realized that as an adult I’d been drawn in by their play as well. And that was when I realized, I wanted a game.

At first I thought I was a odd but quickly found out I was not alone. It was 2014 and the timing was so fortunate, the Death Positive movement in the US had just started to take form. I stumbled on the Order of the Good Death and attended their Death Salon’s Film Festival in Houston where I met Caitlin Doughty, she’s just as awesome in person as you would think, and I made some life long friends who have been a remarkable support. Knowing I was not alone in thinking we needed more conversation and ways to start them, I forged ahead with my idea.

My boyfriend and now husband, was pulled into my strange project. He added so much as he is a vessel of history, culture, and arcane knowledge, and has a beautifully dark sense of humor. He also understands the rules of grammar. Very helpful.

As a team, we brainstormed and tested numerous ideas: a board game where you moved round the Ouroboros answering questions to cross to the other side, a “Have You Ever” format, competition vs. group play, a job interview to become Death, we even tried out a “Shoots and Ladders” type of escape the underworld format. We really tried out everything we could think of. Numerous friends (game designers, game players, writers, scholars, therapists, artists, and business folk) became our sounding board and test players. We took our time, and through debate, trying out rules, refining questions, developing the look, and play testing. When we got lost, the best advice we received was to create the game that we ourselves wanted to play. With that in mind, we decided simple was better.

After two years of development, we finally launched our kickstarter in August 2016. I’m so proud to say, it successfully funded in less than 60 hours and our original box is now in its 4th printing, we have two expansion packs, and over 12 stores including the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago, and the National Museum of Funeral History in Houston carry our games.

So that’s how this all started. With play and curiosity for something that wasn’t so easy to talk about in the beginning but now feels like a companion.