A game that does not only entertain, but also makes the players think and educates them: Kitti Langa and Mátyás Hegedűs dreamed up a deck of cards calling attention to the importance of adopting dogs and being responsible dog owners. Meet WAU!
Kitti and Matyi make a great duo both within and outside of the WAU project. Kitti studies marketing, but creation has always been close to her heart—she represents the emotional and creative side of the project. Being the rational one in the duo, Matyi is in charge of website development as well as the financial and commercial side of their work.
They came up with the idea of the WAU cards last summer, while they were on the way home on the highway. Thanks to the initial great enthusiasm, they worked out the concept quite quickly and then printed and cut out the cards that very same evening. Then they tried out the game.
“After further testing and improvement, the first prototype was completed in August, with a black and white design at the time. We took it with ourselves everywhere we went and played with it: we thought the more feedback, the better. As a result, there was a surge of interest among our friends and acquaintances: many of them fell in love with the game and wanted to have their own WAU deck, so we completed our first bigger order in November,” Kitti explained.
All the positive feedback and WAU’s message keep inspiring the creators every day: besides entertaining and playing, WAU has a lot more to offer.
As the minds behind the project also highlighted “the goal of the game is to draw attention to the importance of adoption and to encourage potential pet-owners to choose this option instead of buying from breeders. An additional underlying thought it conveys is that adopting in itself is not enough, as by adopting a dog we also assume a responsibility, which we must always keep in mind and must give the adopted dog the love that it deserves. As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry put it: »You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.« Many people tend to forget that.”
And how do we play WAU, you ask?
The essence of the gameplay is that the players have to adopt dogs in exchange for bone dollars, and then can make them happy with love cards. There are also treat cards, allowing the players to gain advantages, and doghouse cards for holding back the others. Finally, the player who is the first to have five happy doggos in their yard wins the game. “A very dynamic, confrontative game develops, and as a result, sometimes the game changes at the very last moments and the last become the first, and vice versa,” Matyi highlighted.
The deck will soon get a new look, too, and thus the initial black and white version will be replaced by a much more colorful and playful set of cards. The new design, just like the one before, is all thanks to Kitti.
In addition to their new visual identity, the creators also work on making WAU available at as many places as possible, and they would like to expand it with complementary decks later on. They also think about creating several new games in the future.
WAU is an amusing party game that can be learned quickly, and offers fun to everyone who loves board games, card games and appreciates spending high quality time together. If you’d like to see how the card game’s story goes, follow WAU’s Instagram page and get your own deck: pre-orders will start in a few weeks!
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