Joking Hazard creator’s next game is about creating the sexiest suitor possible

The next board game from the creator of Joking Hazard, Explosm, is all about making the sexiest suitor possible.

Called Master Dater, the comedic party game has players attempting to create suitors who are attractive enough to receive attention from their opponents. A card game that’s similar to Joking Hazard in that players vote on their favourite creations, Master Dater has players combining various cards in order to make a dreamy enough character to win them the round.

At the start of the round, one person becomes a single who’s ready to mingle with whatever characters their opponents decide to make for them. All the other players then combine a head and body card from their hand and then attempt to sell the single person on the idea of their suitor.

In line with Explosm’s past releases, the cards featured in Master Dater are intended to enable humorous situations, such as the head of Santa Claus being combined with the body of Satan. Players must then try to make their creation appealing to the player performing the role of the single person, in the hopes of being awarded an interest card. Whichever player manages to be the first to gather five interest cards – alongside a card from each of the game’s love, flame and spark categories – is named the winner.

Apart from Master Dater and Joking Hazard, Explosm is best known for making the popular comedy webcomic Cyanide & Happiness – which served as inspiration for Joking Hazard – as well as the follow up to Joking Hazard, Trial by Trolley, a card game that riffs on the classic morality question of the Trolley Problem.

Whilst several of Explosm’s previous releases, including Joking Hazard and Trial by Trolley, have been crowdfunded by Kickstarter campaigns, the crowdfunding campaign for Master Dater has been launched on Gamefound. Cyanide & Happiness co-founder Rob Denbleyker told Dicebreaker that the decision to switch crowdfunding platforms was driven by Kickstarter’s recent pivot into the blockchain and cryptocurrency industries.

“Ulitmately, all of us are against the pivot to crypto.” said Denbleyker, “All of us are pro-environment and none of us would have felt good supporting a company that does stuff like this.”

Denbleyker confirmed that Explosm would consider returning to Kickstarter if the company chose to move away from cryptocurrency but would be avoiding Kickstarter until that time, despite the studio’s previously successful Kickstarter crowdfunding campaigns.

The crowdfunding goal for Master Dater’s Gamefound campaign of $41,069 (£31,000) was successfully reached in under an hour, with the campaign having collected $233,199 (£178,000) at the time of this article’s publication. Backers can pledge $25 (£11) to unlock a copy of Master Dater that’s set to arrive in December.