Matt Golec and Arun Mehra’s Shapely booth at the Philadelphia PAX Unplugged’s Rising Showcase in 2022. Photos courtesy of Matt Golec.
On June 28, longtime Upper Valley gamers-turned-game-designers Matt Golec and Arun Mehra are coming to Black Moon Games in Lebanon to celebrate the release of their new board game, Shapely. It’s the capstone of an eight-year odyssey.
Shapely, which its designers say has loose similarities to Pictionary, is a guessing game in which players use an array of small shapes to create larger shapes for others to guess. The pair first dreamed it up in 2018 and officially released it at the end of May. “People would be like, ‘I’ve always felt anxiety when I had to draw during a game,’ but when they get to compose shapes, it's really easy, it's fun,” says Mehra. “Let them be artistic without having to worry about drawing,” Golec adds.
The two-to-six player game includes 26 shape pieces, 48 “guess cards” and 216 “word cards.” During a game, players take turns building the item listed on a given word card, and are rewarded points based on the accuracy of guesses and correlating bonus points. The game is meant for players ages “six to 96” and meant to be a quick, fun experience for serious gamers, new board game players, and everyone in between.
Golec and Mehra met in 2005 at Triple Play West Lebanon, a game and comic store that hosted gaming events for various popular board, card, and adventure games. Over more than a decade, the two became close friends as they competed and shared joy in their favorite activity: playing games. It wasn’t until Mehra’s son Safir pitched his Dad on a game “putting chips together,” which Mehra then suggested to Golec, that the Shapely concept was born.
Members of the Upper Valley Game Designers test an early version of Shapely at a meeting in Hanover in 2019.
The creators aren’t game designers by training. During the day, Mehra, who studied molecular biology at Dartmouth, works in product management at Cisco, while Golec, an educator and freelance journalist, has taught writing courses and freelanced for many local outlets (including Daybreak) before recently moving to Wisconsin. Gaming and game creation have been a lifelong “fun side hustle” that only turned semi-professional when the duo began working on Shapely. “We've always said, this shouldn't be a job, it should be fun,” says Golec. “If we're not having fun, why are we doing it?”
Since the game’s conception, Mehra and Golec have faced many of the usual challenges that come with launching a board game — constant play testing, redesigning, and pitching to publishers. They’ve also encountered some unexpected obstacles, including a global pandemic and tariffs that delayed the production and delivery of the shapes from factories in China. Neither of them expected an eight-year process—but they’re excited the dream has finally come together.
Golec assembles a Shapely prototype at his former home in Norwich in 2020. In its early stages, he described the game’s construction as an “arts and crafts project.”
In its early stages, the duo built prototypes at their houses, using basic arts and crafts and their knowledge of gaming to construct an early rulebook. While both of them had years of experience playing a wide variety of popular games, and Golec had previously designed the game Penny Press, Mehra described himself as a “complete neophyte” in the world of game design at the beginning.
The designers give great credit to Upper Valley gamers for helping Shapely see the light of day. Once they had a product, they ran local testing events across the region, relying on the feedback of volunteer players and veteran designers alike. Golec says the game would never have become what it is now without the help of Upper Valley Game Designers, a group based at Dartmouth, or the support of businesses like Black Moon and The Fourth Place in Hanover.
Every step of the way, Golec says the most important thing to watch for is the look on players’ faces. “Where are people having fun? Where are people sort of rolling their eyes and going, ‘I wish this would be over?’” Golec says. When game-play slowed, and players seemed unhappy and confused, the designers knew they needed to make a change. With repeated trial and error, the final product slowly came together.
Once they felt the game was close, it was time to find a publisher. Post-pandemic, Golec and Mehra began traveling to gaming conventions and publisher events across the country. The duo would find publishers, pitch to them, and often get positive feedback. But it’s one thing to receive encouragement from a publisher and another to get signed. “Sometimes it’s a swing and a miss, sometimes people show interest, they review it for a little while in their environments, and then you hear nothing back from them, or it sort of fizzles out,” Mehra says.
Mehra picks up his own copy of Shapely in celebration of its release at Little Istanbul in White River Junction.
Eventually, Shapely struck gold at the 2023 “Gathering of Friends,” a 30-year-old, invite-only gaming event in Sunapee, NH. Mehra describes the event as an informal opportunity to ask publishers to try out their product, and at 2 am, Mehra met Frank DiLorenzo, the founder of R&R Games. “I thought, ‘Oh, it's gonna be another one of these tough situations where he's going to take it and play with it for many, many weeks,” Mehra says. “But (DiLorenzo) was like, ‘Nope, I'm going to sign you right now.’”
Since R&R picked it up, much of the work has transitioned from the designers to the publishing company. With American foreign policy adding unexpected delays to trade with China, the game took longer to hit the shelves than anticipated, but finally, at the end of May, the game was ready to sell.
“Shapely is a really fun little party game that's good for the family, it's a really good all-purpose game, and I'm really stoked to carry it,” says Tony Vandenberg, owner and founder of Black Moon Games. “I ordered more of their game than I did the most recent Catan expansion. That's how much faith I have in it.”
Tony Vandenberg, owner of Black Moon Games, in the store’s game demo and playing space. Photo by Duncan Green.
At the release party at the end of June, interested players will have the chance to try the game out, play with the designers, and enjoy cupcakes free of cost. “There’s no better way to learn a game than from the people who made it,” Vandenberg says. The event will run in the store’s gaming space from 12-2 p.m. Attendees are welcome to drop in anytime during the event and are encouraged to play, watch, and get a copy of Shapely — the perfect birthday or holiday present, Mehra says.
And Shapely is just the first of a series of games the longtime gaming friends plan to create. While still in the early stages of development, the duo, under the title Maroon Games (a combination of “Matt” and “Arun”), are working on Time Machine Poker and Battle of the Band Names. They’ll be eager to talk about it all at Shapely’s June 28th release party.
Duncan Green is a rising senior at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, where he is studying journalism and history. Next fall, he will be taking on a lead producing role for the Newshouse, a campus publication covering SU and the city of Syracuse. Duncan graduated from Lebanon High School in 2023 and is based out of Plainfield this summer.
