Smirk And Dagger—

Family Games With An Edge And A Twist

By Nancy K. Crevier

If the graphics on some of his board and card games make you a little nervous as a parent, that is a good thing, says game inventor Curt Covert.

“That’s the one that might engage your teen,” he claims. Tying teens back into the family is one of the goals Mr Covert aims for when designing the games his company, Smirk and Dagger, publishes.

“One of the things I’ve found is that there’s a real role for games with an edge. If you can get a kid to go into school the next day and say to his friends, ‘Man, you should have seen this game my family played last night,’ you know you have a winner,’” he says.

Mr Covert, who lives in Sandy Hook with his wife, Laura, and two sons, Tyler, 13, and Devon, 7, is a creative director at Marketing Drive Worldwide in Wilton, where he noodles ideas for sweepstakes, displays, and signage for companies like Dannon and Krispy Kreme. All that creative thinking does not turn off when he heads for home, though.

Since 2003, he has developed and marketed three games geared toward the adventure/hobby gaming crowd that have been far more popular than he anticipated. Run For Your Life, Candyman! and Dead Hand Poker followed on the heels of his first game, Hex-Hex, a fast moving card game that is “edgy and cool, but really a hot-potato game,” Mr Covert says.

“I always liked board games as a kid,” he explains, “but I got back into board games after college when I didn’t have a lot of money to go out and a bunch of us would get together and game.” The thrill of a good board game or card game, he discovered, was that anticipation in the final moments, when opponents are delivered what he calls “the zinger” that brings them down.

“That’s the fun of playing a game,” he says. “That’s the juice of gaming.”

The company’s name, Smirk and Dagger, refers to that “gotcha” moment, in fact.

“The smirk is that little smile that comes across your face when you know you have your opponent in your sights,” he says, “and the dagger is the zinger as you deliver the final blow.”

Many of the traditional board games, he found, did not have enough of the twists and turns and different layers that he desired in a game. If a game was suitable for young children, it was tedious, at best, for older kids and adults to play. So when he decided to design his own games, he aimed for the Dungeons and Dragons group of gamers who seek out games in specialty game stores.

To draw teens’ attention, Smirk and Dagger utilizes dark graphics with connotations of a seamier side of life than the games actually promote. By walking just on the edge of the dark side, he feels, the games have enough tooth to snag teens without completely alienating their parents.

“The themes I’ve wrapped these games in target a certain group, but they are all family games,” Mr Covert says.

Hex-Hex arrived, coincidentally, on Halloween three years ago and has been carried by local business Cave Comics on Church Hill Road and other small game stores. Borders Books in Danbury has also carried Hex-Hex, Dead Hand Poker, and Run For Your Life, Candyman! during the holiday season for the past two years.

The Underside Of        Candyland

Candyman was a runaway hit — excuse the pun — for Mr Covert. He sold over half of the first print run in just six months, mostly on what he calls “onsies and twosies,” meaning from markets that buy one game at a time.

“I built Candyman as a joke for me,” laughs Mr Covert. “Is there anyone who hasn’t started their early years of board games with Candyland? And of course, it is so basic, it is appealing to little kids. But it is actually mind numbing for parents to play. I started thinking about ‘What if you saw the seedy, underside of Candyland?’ and I started doing visual puns on the game.”

Noticing that many popular video games and computer games involve battles, he decided to incorporate combat into that most innocent board game in the world. As gingerbread game pieces with names like “Bitey” make their way around the board, players cripple each other with sweet tooth attacks that strike designated body parts on the candyman game card. When an entire limb has been attacked, the body part is ripped off the sheet and handed over to the opponent who has “devoured” it as a trophy. Truly creative and vindictive players, Mr Covert says, bake their own gingerbread people to accompany the game and gobble down the molasses-flavored “game card” as the game progresses.

It is no wonder, then, that this game carries a subtitle of “a twisted board game parody for 2 to 6 mean-spirited players.”

Dead Hand Poker is Mr Covert’s attempt to put inexperienced poker players on a more equal footing while maintaining the appeal to more serious players. The dead card in the deck can send a great hand spiraling downward, just as a wild card can make a mediocre hand spectacular.

“The dead card really only increases the chance of winning about 20 percent,” he admits, but it is enough to add one of those twists he loves to the game.

Constructive Criticism

All of the initial development for the Smirk and Dagger games is done solely by Mr Covert. As he gets to the testing stage, he is joined by a friend, Justin Brunetto, who helps him build the prototypes and work out more of the kinks before the two head off to gaming conventions in Las Vegas to market the item.

“Right now I pay Justin with tortilla chips and salsa,” he jokes, but adds that he is extremely grateful to the numerous hours that Mr Brunetto has devoted to Smirk and Dagger.

Once the games have the kinks worked out and professional gamers at the conventions have added their suggestions, the Covert family gets to test the game. “My sons give me constructive criticism at that point and they are also very good about suggesting add-ons for the games,” he says. Then the game goes to print and hits the shelf.

He also notes that the early months of developing a game can run into late nights and travel that affect his family life. “Certainly my wife has cut me a lot of latitude,” he says, for which he is thankful.

One of Mr Covert’s unusual marketing tactics is to plant Smirk and Dagger “instigators” across the nation. “These are avid game players who really love the games and actively promote them locally wherever they live. I recruit the instigators, but they don’t get any pay. I support them, though, by providing games and T-shirts when they want to do demos and stuff,” he says.

What Mr Covert has discovered with his games is that the audience is far broader than he anticipated. Even so, he realizes that the population Smirk and Dagger games are marketed toward are only a small portion of the people he would like to reach.

To do so, he has recently began to develop game ideas for a more conventional market. He is currently pitching a Harry Potter-themed game based on Hex-Hex to Mattel, which he hopes to see on the market by the release of the next Harry Potter movie.

“I’ll still be doing Smirk and Dagger, though, and as a matter of fact, I have another card game in the works built just for game hobbyists,” he reassures his fans of mean-spirited fun.

“Board games have always been the thing adults buy for the family to bring the family together,” says Mr Covert. If it means playing games with a bit more of an edge than Monopoly or Trivial Pursuit to entice older family members to join in, so be it, says Mr Covert. Smirk and Dagger is there to fill that gap.

Run For Your Life, Candyman! Dead Hand Poker and the updated version of Hex-Hex and the Hex-Hex Expansion Box, which will be reissued in July, are available locally at Cave Comics and in Norwalk at Pub Games Plus. They can also be ordered online through Amazon.com or by going to SmirkAndDagger.com. Now go get ‘em.