Mother-daughter duo from Milwaukee creates board game with national park theme

MILWAUKEE — Monopoly? Nothing new. Uno? Already seen it all. Two game developers from Milwaukee hope that their new board game will be a big success.

The mother-daughter duo Stacy and Annabelle Tornio founded Lucky Bears.

“Lucky Bears is our national park board game that we wanted to develop during my senior year of high school,” said Annabelle Tornio.

“We love board games. We play them all the time as a family, so let’s make a board game,” said Stacy Tornio.

It all started in 2023. Annabelle Tornio could have gotten a job in her senior year of high school, but she went the entrepreneur route and developed this game instead.

The theme was easy to choose, they said. The two love visiting national parks. They’ve combined their passion for board games and nature into something they hope will be a best seller.

Stacy Tornio

“I would say my favorite piece is the tokens. I love our tokens because each one has a unique motif that depicts each national park and shows off the best features of each park,” said Annabelle.

This is the first time either of them has done something like this. Although Stacy worked as a small board game developer for two years, she didn’t make the games herself. Conception, design, and production of the game took about 10 months. They were able to finance everything after raising more than $15,000 through Kickstarter.

Watch the video to see what Lucky Bears game looks like…

Mother-daughter duo from Milwaukee creates board game with national park theme

“But the logistics side was scary. So it’s finding a manufacturer, shipping it, how much are you going to charge for it, are you going to be profitable,” Stacy said.

The two had to decide on the box dimensions and material, create color schemes, determine the exact shades of each color, size the game pieces, choose a manufacturer, find ways to cut costs, and everything else that comes to mind when making a game.

Since this game involves national parks, the duo wanted to ensure that the packaging and manufacturing process was sustainable.

“We wanted to make sure we were working with a company that had sustainability practices, and we also didn’t want any plastic or unnecessary materials in our game,” said Annabelle.

Even though Lucky Bears is an independent game developer, it looks like any other game you would find at Target.

“It doesn’t look like it’s any lesser quality than a Catan on the shelves or anything else, and we’re very proud of that,” Stacy said.

James Groh

Board games are fun, but learning the rules to a new game is difficult. Usually, what happens is this: Someone explains to you all the rules of a complicated game that you don’t fully understand. You are assured that you’ll “get it as you play.” But you don’t really understand. The game continues, and it’s confusing and frustrating. All of this can lead to you not even liking the game.

Stacy and Annabelle wanted to make sure their game was actually easy to understand and fun.

“The rules are on one page, that’s it. We didn’t want to make it complicated,” Stacy said.

It takes about two to three minutes to learn. Here’s almost the full description of the rules of the game from Annabelle: “Take all of your pieces and shuffle them face down on the board, or you can just leave them in the bag, whatever you prefer, but we recommend putting them face down on the playing surface you’re playing with. And then each player takes 5 pieces and puts them diagonally on the (paws), but there in numerical order from top to bottom. And then you play rock, paper, scissors to see who gets to pick up a piece first. And then you take turns taking a piece from the pile, looking at it, and putting it on your board in numerical order from left to right and top to bottom. And the goal is to fill your whole board before the other player.”

They had about 75 people test the game to make it as easy as possible for the user. I wanted to see how easy it was, so I played along, and it was quite easy to get started. It’s suitable for children aged 8 and up.

James Groh

The game will be ready to ship in late September. To pre-order a copy, visit the Lucky Bears website.

Stacy and Annabelle are already happy with what they’ve accomplished. They’ve taken a game from concept to product and overcome all the hurdles during the 10-month process, so if the game sells well, that’s great. However, they’re just happy with what they’ve accomplished.

“If our game goes through, people like it and it sells well, that’s fantastic and I’ll be super happy. But if not, then I think we’ve succeeded,” said Annabelle.

Every now and then there’s a new game that takes everyone by storm, like Codenames or Catan. The makers of Lucky Bears hope the same will happen to them.

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