SPELLIO ORIGIN STORY!

Hi, I’m Max and here’s how Spellio began …

It was a stormy night in late December and I was home for winter break during my junior year at Syracuse. My family was finishing up dinner when my dad’s phone rang. It was our longest family friend Deb calling to see if we wanted to check out her latest “best idea,” claiming she’d created the next big-hit card game.

As Deb dusted off the snow, she handed me a big bag of homemade playing cards filled with handwritten “consonants and vowels” on colorful stickers.  I took one look and thought, Yeah, no thanks, definitely not interested in a spelling game, and headed upstairs. But when I overheard Deb say, “if you can spell three-letter words, you can play this game,” I decided to join my family to take a closer look. Within minutes of playing, I was hooked. I knew right then that I had to be a part of creating this game and Deb was psyched for me to join her.

That stormy night kickstarted a journey of countless hours brainstorming ideas, workshopping new rules, incorporating feedback from dozens of game-play test rounds, and creating the design for our first (of many)  prototypes. Our goal was to capture the best characteristics of our favorite games: speed, competition, and accessibility. The feedback was amazing. We not only created a card game that really is smart fast fun for everyone, but as my friend from Syracuse said, we created a game that actually turns “spelling-fear into spelling-fun.”

 

 Hi I’m Deb 

It’s been awesome to see how much fun people have playing Spellio. Friends, family, and strangers have played everywhere from family vacations,  dinner parties, on first-dates, at fraternity parties, and recently at Notch Brewing in Boston who hosted our official soft-launch event.  

However. it was during all this preliminary gameplay, that we discovered that Spellio was more than just a fun, social game. To our surprise, we heard from educators, parents, speech pathologists, pediatricians, and others that Spellio actually is an empowering, even transformative game for  English language learners of all ages, new readers, kids with learning differences, seniors with memory challenges, and more.  We are thrilled by these unanticipated benefits and welcome your stories and feedback as well. 

We are so excited to introduce

SPELLIO: SMART, FAST, FUN,  … for EVERYONE

THE SPELLIO ORIGIN STORY

Hi, I’m Max and here’s how Spellio began …

It was a stormy night in late December and I was home for winter break during my junior year at Syracuse. My family was finishing up dinner when my dad’s phone rang. It was our longest family friend Deb calling to see if we wanted to check out her latest “best idea,” claiming she’d created the next big-hit card game.

As Deb dusted off the snow, she handed me a big bag of homemade playing cards filled with handwritten “consonants and vowels” on colorful stickers.  I took one look and thought, Yeah, no thanks, definitely not interested in a spelling game, and headed upstairs. But when I overheard Deb say, “if you can spell three-letter words, you can play this game,” I decided to join my family to take a closer look. Within minutes of playing, I was hooked. I knew right then that I had to be a part of creating this game and Deb was psyched for me to join her.

That stormy night kickstarted a journey of countless hours brainstorming ideas, workshopping new rules, incorporating feedback from dozens of game-play test rounds, and creating the design for our first (of many)  prototypes. Our goal was to capture the best characteristics of our favorite games: speed, competition, and accessibility. The feedback was amazing. We not only created a card game that really is smart fast fun for everyone, but as my friend from Syracuse said, we created a game that actually turns “spelling-fear into spelling-fun.”

 

 Hi I’m Deb 

It’s been awesome to see how much fun people have playing Spellio. Friends, family, and strangers have played everywhere from family vacations,  dinner parties, on first-dates, at fraternity parties, and recently at Notch Brewing in Boston who hosted our official soft-launch event.  

However. it was during all this preliminary gameplay, that we discovered that Spellio was more than just a fun, social game. To our surprise, we heard from educators, parents, speech pathologists, pediatricians, and others that Spellio actually is an empowering, even transformative game for  English language learners of all ages, new readers, kids with learning differences, seniors with memory challenges, and more.  We are thrilled by these unanticipated benefits and welcome your stories and feedback as well. 

We are so excited to introduce

SPELLIO: SMART, FAST, FUN,  … for EVERYONE