Hot Brown Surprise

About Hot Brown Surprise

This game-in-a-booster pack was designed, developed, and published by the Brieger Creative team in collaboration with Solis Game Studio to be a promotional item at GAMA Expo 2026. Based on Louisville's signature regional sandwich, the Hot Brown, which celebrated its 100th anniversary that year.

Each pack of 11 ingredient cards allows 2-3 players to jointly, secretly build a Hot Brown out of various ingredient cards, followed by chanting "Hot... Brown... Surprise!", flipping the sandwich over, and then executing the cards' effects from top-to-bottom. These effects make players, draw, discard, and swap their remaining card in-hand, and by the time the last effect is activated, the player with the highest numbered card is the winner.

Project Overview:

The goal for this project was to showcase Brieger Creative and Solis Game Studio's skillset as a full stack development service. Together as a team, we managed every part of the tabletop game creation process:

From the initial concept to the final games being handed out at GAMA Expo, the entire process took exactly one year.

Hot Brown Surprise also presented unique challenges in that it's a Trading Card Game, meaning that each copy is different, and it's shipped in randomized packs which are themselves randomized inside booster box display cases. This impacted our work at every stage of development, adding an extra layer of challenge.

Case Study: Building a Promotional Game

Concept

The initial pitch from John Brieger, studio head, was "Let's make a game for GAMA 2026 to promote Brieger Creative, like our previous promotional escape-room-in-a-booster-pack game Murder at the Atelier. This time it will be about the Hot Brown sandwich, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary at GAMA 2026. We'll call it Hot Brown Surprise, because it's funny. Like Atelier, it must be a small card game that can be shipped in an envelope."

We then opened up design pitches to the team internally, where any Brieger Creative team member could build a pitch document or prototype to present for approval.

Design

This is where inspiration struck for Breeze. He had a rough concept pretty quickly: the game should be about "making a sandwich" and feature a "surprise" - something where a stack of cards is built and flipped over in an exciting way. The initial design came together as an 11-card game where players jointly put ingredient cards into a pile, flipped it over, and then their remaining card determined who won. This core carried directly through to the final version.

Development

The design of the game was then passed off to Bryan "Duckie" Lue to create and finalize the game's content, developing different play strategies, and resolving issues such as the game resulting in too many ties. During this phase, Breeze suggested the game could be a quasi-TCG, with a couple randomized "surprise" cards in each pack. This led to Duckie researching numerous actual Hot Brown recipes and creating many Surprise ingredient cards with unique effects.

As part of development, Duckie also created the language for the game's cards and instructions, ensuring clear and consistent language. We would later revisit the rules during the final graphic design step to run unguided learning tests and ensure proper formatting.

Art Direction

Once the gameplay aspect of the game was finished, it was passed to Chris Solis of Solis Game Studio, our frequent collaborator, to handle the graphics and production of the game. He found and enlisted the talented illustrator and graphic designer Nadia Carrim, who gave the game a unique visual identity.

Product Design

Using Nadia's artwork, graphics, and logos, Chris then created all of the print-ready layouts for the assets, packaging and marketing materials. This included the booster pack and booster box design, with care put into the game's taglines and abbreviated gameplay pitch. Here, Duckie and Breeze stepped back in to do final editing and file approvals, tightening up language, reference cards, and diagrams.

Print Production

Chris then spearheaded our printing process with Whatz Games, who they also use for a similar product - the MassiveVerse Fighting Card Game. Here, we chose to use paper booster packs for sustainability reasons. The game's physical proofs were sent to us and approved quickly and seamlessly, with shipping being arranged shortly after.

Publication and Release

Once the game arrived, Chris and John had promotional materials such as booth signage and T-shirts made, with graphics again by Nadia, and we developed our promotional strategy at GAMA Expo: An active booth running demos, and a team of Brieger Creative developers handing out packs to retailers and publishers! We prepared unique pitches for various types of potential clients, and how HBS could serve as an example for work we could do for them.

Together, we handed out nearly 2000 packs to attendees, as well as Chris making the game available online, with accompanying social media advertisement.

Conclusion

Want us to create a game to promote your business? How about an entire product for one of your IPs? How Brown Surprise is a great example of how we can do it all.

Grab Your Own Copy!

Brieger Creative Team

Solis Game Studio Team