Introduction

It's not every day you get to mix work with what you genuinely love. That's the kind of luck Max, our creative, had throughout 2025. As a side project for the agency, we set out to create something that would tell the story of our values and the mindset we bring to work every day — but in a creative way.

The result? One year later, ASAP was born — agency life, ready to play.

Behind this gift for our clients lies a story of sleepless nights, ideas built up and torn apart, and a proudly well-developed nerdy side. To walk you through the creative process behind ASAP, we went straight to the source — the person who dreamed it up and brought it to life. Because behind every simple idea, there's always a minefield of challenges.

The Idea

The project started during one of the many brainstorming sessions we run at sixeleven. Back in February 2025, we began exploring the idea of creating a product that truly reflected the agency's values. Specifically, we wanted to convey a sense of playfulness and fun tied to the creative work we do every day. There were plenty of proposals on the table, but from the very beginning I pushed for the idea of a game about agency life — tapping into my nerdier side.

First, we thought about the audience. We wanted to gift it to our clients, so it had to be accessible to everyone. Anyone who's experienced office life can relate to certain dynamics; those who work in communications will catch the inside jokes and enjoy a whole extra layer. Then we picked the format: cards, inspired by Steve Jackson's Munchkin. A simple, fast-paced format we could anchor to agency life with an ironic twist. We wanted it to be easy to pick up: after one practice round, you're good to go.

Because everyone, at some point, has had to pull off miracles to deliver something as soon as possible. From there, we built out the copy following that same logic: A game about agency life, ready to play now.

Developing ASAP

The first step was defining the game architecture: establishing character roles and the types of actions available. Then we mapped out the game's time structure - everything is symbolically built around a working week. From there, we designed the deck: 125 cards, each one hand-illustrated. It's not just a creative exercise - it's a numbers game. We had to implement mathematical logic and specific ratios to ensure balanced gameplay across different card categories. That's how we fine-tuned the balance between defense cards, bonus cards, and penalty cards. The final deck is calibrated for a total of 20 turns, based on an average of 4 turns per day across 5 working days.

Exactly. A proper beta testing phase. First, to check whether the game was actually fun - but also to catch logical bugs you'd never spot through math alone. For example, we realized that boss cards could be drawn back-to-back by the same player, which threw off the whole game dynamic. So now, if you draw a second one in a row, it gets shuffled back into the deck.

The illustrations. The final deck has 125 cards, and the illustration phase was by far the longest. I lost count of the late nights I spent drawing.

ASAP is a fast, lean game designed for short sessions - half an hour, tops. It plays with 3 to 6 people. The most rewarding part was taking the game outside our industry: the feedback was overwhelmingly positive, and everyone could see themselves in the office dynamics - the borderline situations, the difficult colleagues.

What's next for ASAP?

Good question. Originally, this was meant to be a branding project - a gift for our clients. But there's definitely room to grow. In the short term, I'd love to get it in front of as many people as possible, keep collecting feedback, and potentially develop a 2.0 version. And who knows - I wouldn't mind seeing ASAP on a shelf someday.

Not at all: these are universal office situations: last-minute calls, a broken printer, heating on the fritz. We're laughing at scenes that happen to literally everyone. If someone feels particularly targeted, we'd suggest they sit down and play a round of ASAP - it might help.