SYMPTOMATIC

If you’ve ever wanted to wish ill will on another family member or friend in a fun way, Leslie Kolke and Jered Byford have come up with the perfect idea that will certainly generate some chuckles and light-hearted humor.  

The Medford couple has launched Symptomatic, a game of sickness, survival and betrayal. The light, card-based game is available on Kickstarter, a platform used to bring creative projects to life.

“From Chicken Pox to the Bubonic Plague, getting sick has never been so much fun,” said Kolke. “You can manage your cards and combine various symptoms to infect others with deadly diseases while utilizing cures to protect yourself.”

Kolke started development of the game in 2018 while she was in college. She designed the art and mechanics of how the game works while Byford and her father Danny Kolke helped with logistics, planning and play-testing.

When the pandemic came along in 2020, development of the game was paused as the theme “felt a little too ‘on the nose’ with current events,” Kolke said. After things started opening up again, Kolke and Byford moved from Washington state to the Twin Cities in 2021 before ending up in Medford in 2022.

The couple became more involved in local game-testing communities, while her father helped back in Washington by involving the local community there. The game was finally polished with the help from play-testers at the Minnesota game testing convention Protospiel MN earlier this year.

The goal of Symptomatic is to find the healthiest player in the group after the first player dies. The diseases in the game are based on real-life ailments and require specific symptoms to infect another player. The game focuses on using both real-world pathology knowledge and in-game strategies to dish out more diseases than you take.

Symptomatic, Kolke said, requires critical thinking, strategy and a bit of luck to stay healthy while everyone else suffers. Featuring plenty of brightly colored original art and goofy puns, Symptomatic is the mix of disease, decisions and dad jokes you never knew you needed.

“Laughter is the best medicine,” said Kolke. “Although the theme of Symptomatic can be considered inherently dark, it's lightened with puns or jokes on every card and a bright and goofy comic book style. This game isn’t intended to make fun of serious illness. It’s for having silly, lighthearted fun with friends and family.”

Kickstarter is a funding platform that allows game creators to share their ideas with the world and backers to pledge money to help make the project a reality, according to Kolke. She said backers pledge money to join creators in bringing projects to life, and in exchange, receive rewards such as one-of-a-kind experiences, limited edition or copies of the creative work.

The couple realized their goal of $7,500 last week and now the game will go into production and backers should have their brand-new card game in time for the holiday season later this year.

Even though the couple has achieved its goal, the game is still available for pre-order until April 20. Preorders can be made at www.kickstarter.com/projects/symptomaticgame/symptomatic-the-card-game. Currently the game is only available through Kickstarter for $32.

While both Kolke and Byford have other full-time jobs, she says Kickstarter is like its own job. “It’s like running a small business,” she said. “It was way more work than I expected,” she added.

Kolke and Byford said their hobby is playing board games as well as card games. They especially enjoy taking games that haven’t been fully developed yet and trying to make them work. “It’s like a puzzle,” she said.

It may come as somewhat of a surprise that Symptomatic isn’t Kolke’s favorite game to play. She actually prefers Century Golem Edition. “This is my baby (Symptomatic), but it doesn’t mean it’s my favorite,” she said, adding she has a collection of more than 100 games.

When the couple got married in 2021, there was no dance. Instead, wedding guests played board games.

“Games are a connection with people,” Kolke says. “The main reason of playing games is to enjoy the company you are with. They are a good medium to get to know people.”

Kolke doesn’t anticipate that they will stop in the development of games with Symptomatic. “We will continue to work on games,” she said. “I love Symptomatic, but I’m excited about what we can do in the future. I don’t think we’ll be able to stop.”

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Symptomatic Card Game

• Created by Leslie Kolke and Jered Byford of Medford

• Available for $32 at www.kickstarter.com/projects/symptomaticgame/symptomatic-the-card-game.