An Interview with Eric Olsen, Inventor of Flip 7 and Co-Founder of Messy Table Games
Image: Eric Olsen representing Flip 7 at Essen 2025
Warm-Up & Introduction
Chris: First of all, thanks for joining me, Eric. I’m a huge fan of Flip 7. I’ve lost count of how many people I’ve introduced to it, and how many of those people have gone on to buy their own copy afterwards.
Before we’d even properly started the interview, you showed me a box behind you full of Flip 7. What exactly was in there?
Eric: It’s Flip 7 in 25 different languages from all around the world. It’s absolutely crazy.
I’ve also got the National Parks version and the Liquid Death version around here somewhere. I live in Boise, Idaho, so very much in the National Parks part of the US too!
Image: Flip 7 National Park Edition
Chris: That must be a pretty surreal thing to have sitting behind you considering you’ve only recently celebrated six years working in tabletop.
Eric: It really is.
It probably looks like lots of games are coming out all at once now, but some of them have been sitting around for a long time waiting for the right opportunity.
Flip 7 launched at Gen Con two years ago. It had a good launch, but it was really just getting going. Then the following year I got to go out to Berlin for the awards, went to my first Gen Con and then my first Essen.
It’s hard to believe that was all only last year.
Chris: So, with another Gen Con now under your belt, how was Gen Con 2026?
Eric: It was great. We actually rarely set up a booth at conventions because we’re usually there meeting with people. Those meetings have proven incredibly valuable for us.
It’s obviously about sharing information, learning and helping the business evolve, but we’re also looking for people we genuinely like and want to work with.
We held our first annual Happy Hour at Gen Con this year too, and that was a lot of fun. You get people together, play games, have a drink and actually get to know each other.
That personal side of the industry is something I really enjoy.
Image: Eric hanging with friends at ChiTAG 2025
Background & creative journey
Chris: From a quick snoop into your background before our chat, I discovered mathematics and teaching, which didn’t particularly surprise me considering your games.
I also discovered singing, which definitely did.
Image: Eric Olsen’s Modern Day Crooner Album Cover
How did you go from engineering, to teaching, to performing thousands of shows, and eventually designing games?
Eric: I originally went to school for engineering, decided I didn’t like it and ended up getting a degree to teach maths and physics.
I then went back to school and got a master’s degree in teaching deaf and hard-of-hearing students, and I was a sign language interpreter for a while.
After that, I went over to Europe and lived in Prague for about six months. I taught English and sang in bars while I was there: Bob Dylan, James Taylor, Simon & Garfunkel, Indigo Girls, anything I could think of.
When I came back to the US, I was looking at going into education policy and eventually doing a doctorate, but at the same time I was singing part-time and absolutely loved it.
Eventually, singing became what I did.
At one point I was doing around 600 shows a year. I could probably perform five or six hundred songs without music, and they weren’t just straight performances either. I’d tell stories, give people little bits of information about the songs, have routines around them and make it entertaining.
I’ve probably done somewhere over 10,000 performances when you include all the different kinds of music I’ve played over the years.
Then we moved to Idaho with the kids and I became a maths teacher. It put me on the same schedule as them, which was fantastic. I could be home during the summers and Christmas, pick them up after school and take them to their activities.
I loved that part of it.
Chris: But even then you still found something else to chase.
Eric: I do. I need something.
A few years into teaching, I went back and got another master’s degree in administration. I also taught calculus classes at Boise State University for a while.
During COVID, I came up with the idea for Glyphics.
Image: Example of a Glyphics card and making a “glyph”
At that point I was teaching, moving into school administration, adjuncting at the university, starting to get into the games world and still had both kids at home.
It was busy!
Eventually, the games started developing enough that my friend Jeff came to me and said, “Let’s do this.”
So I stopped adjuncting and started putting that extra time into games instead.
Chris: Do you still sing?
Eric: Absolutely. I still play a couple of times a week and go to an Irish music session every week.
I had an Irish trio for a while too, so I still play traditional Irish music. It’s a lot of fun.
Chris: If we can get you to UK Games Expo one year, I feel like someone needs to find you a guitar.
Eric: If we can borrow a guitar, get a couple of bottles of Jameson and sing some Irish songs, I’d love that!
Chris: Deal.
Something else you said really stood out to me: that tabletop is the first career where you feel like all of those different parts of you have come together.
Eric: It really is.
Had I known how entrepreneurial I was when I was 20 or 21, that’s probably what I would have studied.
I didn’t really understand small business when I was younger. Business, to me, meant big corporations and Wall Street.
But business is also somebody running a lawn care service, making candles, opening a coffee shop or trying to sell games.
Now, with games, I feel like I’m finally able to use all of my different skill sets at the same time.
I can be creative. I can think outside the box. I can set my own schedule. I can network. I can teach people things.
All of these things that I enjoy come together.
If I can think it, I can do it.
Image: Eric selfie with random hotel lobby table Essen 2025
Education, games & teaching people to play
Chris: That brings me to something I’ve noticed across your games.
Glyphics, Flip 7, Tally Up! and now Star Catcher all have educational benefits to them, whether that’s creativity, mental maths, probability, risk assessment or pattern recognition.
Is that educational DNA a conscious decision because of your teaching background?
Eric: It’s not conscious when I’m designing the games.
Glyphics is obviously a very creative game, and I don’t mean that I was creative for inventing it, I mean that playing it requires creativity.
With the others, maybe there is something subconsciously there because of my background.
Do I deliberately sit down and say, “I’m going to make this educational?”
No.
But do I love educating people? Absolutely.
Image: Eric playing games in second floor hall Gen Con 2026
I’m probably most at-home somewhere like Gen Con, PAX or UK Games Expo sitting at a demo table, playing a game with somebody and showing them how it works.
That’s when I’m in heaven.
Even when I used to perform, I’d tell people when a song came out, who originally recorded it, what film it appeared in or some little story behind it.
Not in an educational way where there’s going to be a test afterwards!
Just sharing something interesting in a friendly, fun way.
Chris: I think that comes through when you teach your games too. You’re giving people a little look behind the curtain without it ever feeling like they’re being taught a lesson.
Eric: Exactly.
Image: Eric & Jeff representing Messy Table Games at their inaugural Happy Hour at Gen Con 2026
The story behind Messy Table Games
Chris: We’ve spoken about your games, but I want to talk about Messy Table Games itself.
I imagine a lot of people who discovered you through Flip 7 might assume Messy Table Games came afterwards, but that’s not actually what happened.
Eric: No, Messy Table Games was already happening before we knew what Flip 7 was going to become.
About a year and a half before Flip 7 launched, my friend Jeff and I started Messy Table Games.
Flip 7 was actually going to be our first game. We had commissioned artwork and had already gone through a couple of rounds of art for it.
Then the opportunity came along for Flip 7 to be published by The Op.
Jeff basically said, “Look, this could be a good opportunity for you.”
So Messy Table Games pivoted to another game I’d been working on, Booty Dice.
One of the advantages of being a small company is that we can be really nimble. We switched focus to Booty Dice in March and had it listed on Amazon by November.
Chris: That’s an incredibly tight turnaround.
The game also looks fantastic.
Eric: The artwork is by C.B. Canga, who also worked on Forbidden Island.
I loved his artwork on that game, so I reached out and basically asked, “Do you want to do a pirate game?”
Sometimes I describe Booty Dice as pirate bingo, or a simplified King of Tokyo for people who know that game.
Image: Booty Dice Cover
Chris: There’s quite a lot of push-your-luck running through it too.
And one of your favourite mechanisms in the game wasn’t actually your idea, was it?
Eric: No! That’s why I tell people to playtest all the time.
There are negative results you can roll in Booty Dice. For example, you might lose a life.
One of my friends pointed out that if there’s a bad die result, players need a reason why they might sometimes want to keep rolling those dice instead of always avoiding them.
That eventually became the Mutiny rule.
If you roll three of the Walk the Plank symbols, instead of hurting you, every other player loses a life.
And they stack. So if you somehow roll even more of them, it gets worse for everyone else.
It’s really clever.
And it wasn’t my idea!
That’s one of the reasons playtesting and involving other people in a design is so valuable.
Image: The dice, token and card components from Booty Dice
Flip 7, Tally Up! & “overnight” success
Chris: By the time Flip 7 really started exploding, you weren’t actually a new designer anymore.
Eric: Exactly. By the time Flip 7 started gaining popularity, I already had several other published games.
That’s one of the funny things about it.
From the outside, it can look like everything suddenly happened at once. But some games come together really quickly and others take years before they find the right home or the right moment.
Collaborating with other people has also allowed me to be more productive.
And the biggest change is that I was able to retire from teaching last year, so now I have much more time to devote to games.
Image: Tally Up!
Chris: Flip 7 obviously introduced an enormous number of people to your work, but now Tally Up! seems to be building an audience of its own.
How do you normally explain that one to people?
Eric: Sometimes I’ll describe it as if you were playing Farkle, but everybody was playing off the same roll, except you’ve got these special dice.
I’ve always felt like there’s a lot of space to explore in dice games, which is part of the reason I developed Booty Dice and Tally Up!
Chris: What I really like with Tally Up! is that the dice aren’t all the same. Every die gives you a slightly different relationship between risk and reward, so deciding which dice you’re willing to trust becomes as important as deciding whether to keep going.
Video caption: And, if readers want to see exactly how chaotic that can become...
[EMBED/LINK: Smosh Games plays Tally Up! on Board AF]
Star Catcher
Chris: But Tally Up! isn’t the only new Messy Table Games release.
I admitted this to you during our call, but I’d already read the Star Catcher rules before speaking to you.
For everyone else, though, let’s pretend I haven’t.
Where did Star Catcher come from?
Image: Star Catcher
Eric: Star Catcher came from an old Persian card game called Pasur.
One of my best friends, Ali Nooriala, has Iranian parents. A couple of years ago he emailed me and said there was this style of fishing card game that’s really popular in parts of the Middle East and North Africa, but that you don’t see very often here in the US.
He told me I should check it out.
So I grabbed a normal deck of playing cards and played it with my kids.
Even using the traditional cards and rules, they really liked it.
That made me think there might be something there.
I started developing it from that point.
There were suits originally, but eventually I realised there was no reason for them to be there in the version I was building, so I removed them.
I also felt the scoring needed more going on, because people like to score!
So I added more ways to score, balanced the reward for clearing the table and made other changes until it became Star Catcher.
One little touch I really like is that when you add up your score cards at the end, all of the stars line up at the bottom so you can stack the cards together and count them.
It’s simple, but it’s fun.
Image: How To Play Star Catcher
Chris: You and Jeff have also built something quite unusual to help people learn the game before buying it.
Eric: Jeff comes from a tech background, which is really convenient sometimes!
We’ve been experimenting with giving people a way to actually try Star Catcher online.
You’re playing against bots, but within about five minutes you’ll understand how the game works.
It’s something new we’re trying, and we’d genuinely love feedback from people who give it a go.
Blooming Bouquets
Chris: Star Catcher isn’t your only new game either.
At Gen Con, Blooming Bouquets, co-designed with Ali Nooriala, made its debut.
You described this to me as your first “cozy game”. Tell me more.
Image: Blooming Bouquets Box and components
Eric: That’s exactly how I’ve been describing it: my first cozy game.
Ali had come to me and said he’d love to help with some game ideas.
I’ve always felt like there’s interesting space to explore with dice, so I asked him to come back to me with ideas for things you could do with dice.
One of the ideas he brought back was using asymmetrical dice.
Image: Blooming Bouquets’ asymmetrical dice
In Blooming Bouquets, you’re rolling flower dice, but the dice aren’t identical. There are common flowers and rare flowers appearing in different combinations across them.
You’re then trying to use what you’ve rolled to collect the flowers that are actually available in the market and fill your bouquets.
That’s where the interesting decision comes in.
You might roll exactly what you want, but the flowers you’re looking for might not actually be available in the market.
So you’re constantly looking at what you’ve rolled, what’s available and what you need.
Chris: The game can also be played competitively, cooperatively or solo, which feels perfect for that cozy style of game.
Eric: It really does.
It’s quite straightforward, relaxed and approachable. It’s very different from something like Flip 7 or Tally Up!, and I like that.
Collaboration & creativity
Chris: Collaboration seems to come up constantly when you talk about your games.
Booty Dice changed because of something a playtester suggested. Ali introduced you to Pasur, which ultimately became Star Catcher. Blooming Bouquets grew from an asymmetrical dice idea he brought you.
Does having other people around you help fuel your creativity?
Image: Eric and “Bacchus” friends playtesting a new game
Eric: Absolutely.
Some games come together faster than others, and working with collaborators has definitely helped me do more.
Sometimes somebody doesn’t need to hand you an entire game idea.
They might just say one thing that plants a seed.
Then you start thinking, “That’s kind of fun…”
And you start noodling with it.
You go backwards and forwards, try different versions, playtest it and eventually you might end up somewhere neither of you would have reached individually.
I like that process.
I also think that’s one of the things I enjoy so much about conventions.
The meetings aren’t just business meetings. You get to know people.
You hear their stories. You learn what they’re working on. You swap information and ideas.
At this point, Jeff and I are fortunate enough that we can choose to work with people we genuinely enjoy being around.
Chris: That feels very true to my own experience of tabletop. People are incredibly willing to share knowledge and help each other.
Eric: That’s the cool part of it.
It’s not just the business side. It’s the personal side too.
Advice for aspiring game designers
Chris: For somebody reading this who has an idea scribbled in a notebook and thinks, “I’d love to design a board game one day,” what’s one thing you’d want them to take from your experience?
Image: Prototype dice for Booty Dice
Eric: Playtest. A lot.
Don’t assume that because you invented the game, every good idea in the game has to come from you.
That Mutiny rule in Booty Dice is one of my favourite examples because it’s really clever and it came from somebody else playing the game and spotting something I hadn’t.
Listen to people.
Try things.
Some ideas will work and some won’t.
And don’t assume every game has to happen immediately either.
Some games come together incredibly quickly. Others might sit around until the right opportunity or the right person comes along.
That’s okay.
I’d also encourage people to meet others in the industry.
Those relationships are incredibly valuable, not just because somebody might be able to help your game, but because this is a really enjoyable community to be part of.
Image: Eric and the Lost Boy Entertainment Team
Looking ahead
Chris: You’ve packed an awful lot into six years already.
You’ve gone from teaching during COVID and creating Glyphics to having Flip 7 all around the world, founding Messy Table Games, retiring from teaching and now releasing several very different games.
Do you feel like you’re only getting started?
Eric: I do.
Retiring from teaching has given me the chance to devote much more time to games, and collaboration is letting me explore more ideas too.
I’m enjoying being able to do this full-time.
This world brings together so many of the things I enjoy: creativity, teaching, networking, working with people and being entrepreneurial.
There’s a lot more I want to do.
Chris: And European readers may get the chance to meet you pretty soon too?
Eric: I’ll be at Essen this year.
And Jeff and I are hoping to make it over to UK Games Expo 2027 as well. We probably wouldn’t set up our own booth because that’s not usually how we approach conventions, but we’d really like to go.
Chris: Between your games and the Irish music, I think we’ll find somewhere for you.
Eric: That would be fun! I’d love that.
Where to find Eric Olsen & Messy Table Games
Chris: For anyone who wants to follow your work or get hold of one of your games, where can they find you online?
LinkedIn: Eric Olsen
Instagram:@ericolsengames
You can also find out more about Messy Table Games, including Tally Up!, Star Catcher, Booty Dice and future projects:
And you can try Star Catcher online before getting it to the table:
Eric, thank you for your time, for being so open about your journey and for all the advice along the way.
Speaking with you really reinforced something I continue to love about this hobby: behind the games we play are people who are genuinely excited to share ideas, help others and bring more people around the table.
I can’t wait to see what you and Messy Table Games do next.
About the author
Chris Ridley is a digital marketer by trade and father to twins by luck. He also runs Small Space, Big Plays, a social account that helps busy adults with limited space and limited free time to curate a versatile game collection. Outside of playing and writing about games, he is an avid runner, having recently completed the 2026 London Marathon as his first-ever marathon.
