Keyboard Cat Creator Nabs $200K On Kickstarter To Make A Geektastic Card Game

Remember Keyboard Cat? Of course you do. It’s pretty much the Citizen Kane of the YouTube generation.

The meme’s creator*, Brad O’Farrel, has managed to raise $200K+ on Kickstarter for Story War, a card game that sits somewhere between Cards Against Humanity and Dungeons & Dragons. In Story War, teams pit mythical creatures against each other in a variety of legendary environments, then scream and yell at each other over which would win a fight. Which is perfect, because there’s nothing us geeks love more than arguing about stuff that doesn’t exist. [See: any gadget blog’s comments ever.]

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I’ve embedded a video of a couple of people playtesting the game below — but for all of you who might not have time to watch strangers play cards for 10 minutes (psh), here’s the gist:

  • One player (the judge) plays a random Battlefield card, each representing a different environment (think Cloud City, mid-way up a Bean Stalk, or inside M.C. Escher’s labrynthian stairways.)
  • Each player picks a “Warrior” from their hand (be it Grumpy Cat, The Doctor, or Lady Gaga,) puts it down, and then explains why their card could totally beat up everyone else’s card.
  • The judge picks a winner, with the next person around the table taking over judge duties for the next round.

In other words, it’s the Cards Against Humanity concept applied to storytelling. Except with monsters and goblins instead of, you know, dildos and poop. You could say it’s more like Apples To Apples, in that case, but everyone knows Apples To Apples slipped down the ranks long ago, from “BEST PARTY GAME EVER!” to “Decent party game for when you want to play Cards Against Humanity but you’re with your family.”

O’Farrel and his three-man team are just about to pass the $250,000 mark on their Kickstarter campaign, which puts them more than 10x past their original $20,000 goal. According to an AMA on Reddit, O’Farrel had quit his day job by day 2 of the Kickstarter. Man, I love living in the future.

[* To be fair, some pedants might argue the “creator” title. The Keyboard Cat video was actually shot about two decades ago by someone else — Brad just found it, cut it down, and started the trend of tacking it on to clips of people… having bad days.]