When I started creating the game, I knew it was going to be on a party theme,  would feature the Party Animals! characters. I also knew it would not involve noise or batteries. (You know someone has played a lot of children's board games when . . .) A bingo/lotto game was the perfect fit -  the rest was still blurry. I began to start to collect ideas for party themes, and got loads of ideas from our local Moms Facebook groups. Some were easy to rule out - themes that centered on one type of animals (dinosaurs, ocean, teddy bear picnic) would not work because I wanted all the Party Animals! to fit in seamlessly. Existing commercial themes were automatically out, as were themes that were already prominently featured in the book (e.g. camping).

I narrowed it down to 8 themes, and again my social media communities were a huge help. I held votes in Tali's Party Animals Community of Facebook  and on The Speak Boutique Instagram Page. 

And so the 4 themes were chosen: Monsters, Unicorns, Pirates and Robots & Rockets. 

Finally, the game needed a name! Crowdsourcing to the rescue! My friends on Facebook and Instagram again came through. And we landed on Party Time. 

 From here, I needed professional help! Watch for the next blog post with details on the evolution of the boardgame illustrations.