Sandwich Shop Games

Games that make the people the best part.

Company we built
Sandwich Shop Games was a game studio we built to create original social games from scratch. We designed the games, made the physical products, built our own tools for writing and testing them, and expanded GENSMAK! from cards to TV and mobile.
Impact
Sandwich Shop was acquired by Sandbox Creations, along with the games and tools we built around them.
Stage
Acquired by Sandbox Creations
Links
gensmak.comBad Chef
The GENSMAK! trivia game
The Bad Chef social deduction game
Sandwich Shop

Our studio

We start with the game, not the product. Every idea begins with blank cards and people around a table. We keep it rough until we know what makes people laugh, argue, strategize, or want to play again.

Handwritten order and poison cards from an early game prototype
We start with blank cards.
We can change the rules between rounds, throw out what does not work, and find the core game before anything gets polished.
We built the first 250 ourselves.
Making and shipping the early GENSMAK! boxes by hand let us refine the structure and packaging before moving to production.
Early GENSMAK! game boxes being packed by hand
A GENSMAK! product photo shoot in progress
GENSMAK! artwork being reviewed on a laptop
Stacks of Sandwich Shop Games shipping boxes
GENSMAK! displayed in a game shop
Finished GENSMAK! game boxes ready to ship

GENSMAK!

GENSMAK! spans five generations of culture, but the point was never just getting questions right. The best rounds turn into stories, debates, impressions, and things you did not know about the people you are playing with.

Family and friends playing GENSMAK! around a table
The questions start the game. The people take it from there.
A hand choosing a GENSMAK! question card
GENSMAK! running as a digital game
GENSMAK! shipped on Google TV, Comcast, and iOS so the same kind of game could happen around the dinner table or across the world.
Game Machine, Sandwich Shop’s trivia knowledge graph
We needed thousands of questions, so we built Game Machine, a knowledge graph of trivia that let our team of writers see gaps in popular culture and create questions based on them.
Wirecutter's GENSMAK! recommendation displayed on a desktop monitor
Bad Chef game box and cards

Bad Chef

Players race to keep a kitchen running by calling out the dishes they need. One person is secretly sabotaging the restaurant, so the louder and more chaotic things get, the harder it is to tell who is actually helping.

Bad Chef rulebook open to the game mechanics
One player is the Bad Chef and wins by causing just enough trouble without getting caught.
Two players holding Bad Chef order cards
Orders are shared across the table, while the dishes needed to complete them are split between players.
Sandwich Shop was acquired by Sandbox Creations