About
Flatout Games is a board game design collaborative founded in 2017 by members Molly Johnson, Robert Melvin, and Shawn Stankewich. We are focused on creating innovative and elegant game experiences. We love puzzly games with simple rules, high replayability, and great tension and decision-making, typically with low-luck, high-skill euro-style mechanisms. Players’ options and decisions should be complex, rules should not be. We love products that have a light footprint, are immaculately detailed, are designed with clarity, simplicity, and elegance at the forefront.
As a design collaborative, we have several designs under their belt, including the Cardboard Edison and LUCI award finalist Point Salad (2019 AEG); Public Market (coming 2021 from Talon Strikes Studios); Dollars to Donuts and Abstract Academy (coming 2021 from Crafty Games); and Truffle Shuffle (2020 AEG).
In early 2019 Flatout Games opened its doors to create The Flatout Games CoLab. The CoLab is an opportunity for the founding members of Flatout Games to team up with awesome established and emerging folks in the board game industry and make cool things together. Our approach is to build the best possible experiences by involving everyone in the entire process. We strive to build passion in each of our collaborators through shared efforts and shared profits. The CoLab, along with members Kevin Russ, David Iezzi, Dylan Mangini, and Beth Sobel, will be bringing Calico to Kickstarter in late 2019.
Land Acknowledgment
We acknowledge that Flatout Games’ administrative operations and significant creative work, on designing and developing games, takes place in the traditional Coast Salish land, including dxʷdəwʔabš (Duwamish) and dxʷsəq̓ʷəbš (Suquamish) past and present. We honour with gratitude their continued presence and stewardship of the land.
This acknowledgement does not take the place of authentic relationships with Indigenous Communities, but serves as a first step in honoring the land on which we live and work.
At this time Flatout Games is making a monthly contribution to the Partnership With Native Americans, a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization committed to championing hope for a brighter future for Native Americans living on remote, isolated and impoverished reservations.
Resources:
https://native-land.ca/resources/territory-acknowledgement
https://nativepartnership.org/
https://raventrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Land-Acknowledgement-PDF.pdf
https://www.duwamishtribe.org/land-acknowledgement
https://smallbusinessbc.ca/article/the-importance-of-land-acknowledgements/