Brotherwise Games

Brotherwise Games is an American tabletop game publisher and design studio founded by brothers Johnny and Chris O'Neal. The company is best known for Boss Monster, a card game in which players take the role of dungeon bosses, not the adventurers who explore fantasy dungeons. Boss Monster combines cards for rooms, spells, treasure, and heroes with an intentionally retro visual language inspired by eight bit console games. A player builds a dungeon to attract heroes whose preferred treasure matches the boss's bait, then tries to defeat them before they reach the boss. This reversal of a familiar fantasy quest defines the game's core idea. Boss Monster was released in 2012, after a Kickstarter campaign for the project. Brotherwise subsequently expanded it with Boss Monster 2: The Next Level and Boss Monster: Rise of the Minibosses. These releases added cards and changed ways to construct and defend a dungeon, while keeping bosses and heroes as the contest's focal characters. The first Boss Monster game also received a digital edition for computers and mobile devices, taking the tabletop dungeon contest onto electronic platforms. Its pixel art, deliberately game-like terminology, and villainous player perspective distinguish the series from conventional adventurer-centered fantasy card games. Brotherwise later broadened its catalogue with Call to Adventure, a narrative card game in which participants assemble a character's life story. Players choose cards representing a hero's origin, motivation, and destiny, then make decisions across story acts. The game uses translucent rune cards that are layered to resolve challenges, making the selected runes a visible part of the character tableau. Brotherwise published Call to Adventure: The Stormlight Archive, an officially licensed game based on Brandon Sanderson's fantasy books. That release applies the Call to Adventure system to Roshar, the world of Sanderson's Stormlight Archive, allowing players to tell original narratives. Another Brotherwise title, OverBoss: A Boss Monster Adventure, carries the Boss Monster aesthetic into tile placement. In OverBoss, players draft and arrange terrain tiles to create an overworld, placing monsters and matching them with suitable terrain when possible. The score depends on the resulting landscape and its inhabitants, rather than on sending heroes through dungeon rooms. OverBoss was released in 2021. Brotherwise later released OverBoss: Duel, a version for two players. The company's own games therefore include dungeon construction, character storytelling, and overworld creation, three different uses of fantasy game imagery in its distinct game range.