The story

It started as a parlor game. In 1920s Paris a handful of Surrealists came up with a trick for making art with strangers: fold a sheet of paper, draw a head, hide it, pass it on. The next person draws a body without ever seeing the head. The next draws the legs. Unfold it and meet something none of you could have imagined alone. They called it Exquisite Corpse. Salvador Dalí played it. Frida Kahlo played it. A hundred years later people are still playing it on bar tops and kitchen tables, laughing at what comes out.

I got hooked on it with two good friends, Sean and Josh. We'd get together, hang out, play games, and draw exquisite corpses until the table was covered in monsters. One night, mid-drawing with Sean, I said it out loud: “this would make a cool card game.” We both froze. A few seconds of silence, staring at each other. Then a scramble for a notebook. That was November 2022.

The scribbles became a game. Since then we've built a rule set a new player can pick up in one sitting, and a template that opens the door to any artist who wants in — any style, any character, anywhere in the world. Every card is a head, a torso, or legs, each one drawn by someone different. Which means every game is a fresh corpse, folded and unfolded by a table full of strangers. Same trick the Surrealists found a century ago: make something together that none of you could have made alone.

— Eric