Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Vegas upstart Battle Born Games is set to debut with Don’t Get Drunk

Don't Get Drunk

A portion of the Don’t Get Drunk game board is shown in this screen capture from video.

Matthew Williams is the guy slinging your drinks at Hakkasan, which means you’re not likely to peg him as the guy who also plays Dungeons & Dragons every week.

Williams is such a huge board game fan, it’s in his blood. “I have family in Germany and they’re really big on board games there,” he says. “I got two games while visiting there, and I made my aunt write translations of them so I could play them back here. One was [Settlers of Catan] before they made it here.”

That likely planted the roots for Williams to start Battle Born Games, his local board game company that is making its debut with Don’t Get Drunk, which has been described as “an adult Candy Land,” and enabled Williams to combine his two biggest passions: gaming and drinking.

Players advance tokens on a board and shuffle through action cards that might require them to answer booze-related questions (and take a swig if they’re wrong), square off in a mini-game of beer pong (and take more swigs if they lose) or follow through on a dare (and post something embarrassing about themselves on social media). As you can tell, the game name is ironic. (You can watch drinking game enthusiasts Blame Society play Don’t Get Drunk here.)

Don’t Get Drunk is clearly influenced by the new school of adult games such as Cards Against Humanity and Exploding Kittens — with a couple of twists. “These are really fun games, and everyone drinks when they play them, and they were all launched on Kickstarter,” Williams says. “But there’s not many games where drinking is part of the game.”

And then there’s the social media aspect, which aims to ramp up the game’s bonkers factor. If people are always on their phones, why not overlap it with their game play? “It'll be something they want to share anyway,” Williams says. “And the dares are a little crazier when you have to share them with the world — well do you want to do them or not?”

Williams got a glimpse of how audaciously people can play his game last Wednesday, when he launched the Kickstarter campaign for Don’t Get Drunk at Born and Raised in Henderson. He distributed four copies of the game for play and, according to his Kickstarter page, saw players “belly-dancing without their shirts on, handstand twerking and yelling that they ‘had the clap’ all in the middle of a bar — sorry not sorry.” (Another game event will take place April 7 at Bad Beat Brewing in Henderson.) He’s also exhibiting the game at beer festivals to gauge interest.

In less than a week, Don’t Get Drunk has met a fifth of its $16,000 Kickstarter goal, the amount required to manufacture the game. Williams is hoping to follow in the footsteps of the thousands of independent gamers that used the entrepreneurial platform to sell their creations directly to fans. It’s how he buys games himself, and it’s how he aims to apply another one of his passions to his professional life.

“I really want to hit the goal because it shows an interest from the public,” Williams says. “I know it’s there. I just left Atlantic City Beer [and Music] Festival and everyone there had a good response [to the game]. It’s about getting it in front of the right people. I know it’ll take off because everyone says good things about it. Who doesn't want to work for themselves and be their own boss?”