How One Farmer Turned a Prayer into Five Published Games

Jason Hsieh (00:00)
Welcome back to another episode of Toy Business Unboxed Podcast. Today we’re excited to have Rusty, the president and designer at Three Nail Games. His journey has been really a true labor of love from balancing teaching, chemistry, and physics to working at a farm, leading youths, and also raising six kids all at the same time, while building a boarding company, which is a lot of work, obviously. And since 2021, they have brought multiple different award-winning games.

Into the marketplace and more on the way in 2025 and beyond. And thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today, Rusty.

Rusty Lumpkin (00:33)
Thank you, Jason. Thanks for having me.

Jason Hsieh (00:35)
Yeah, so I know you wear so many hats. You know, teachers, farmers. I think you’re also a youth pastor, a game designer, and also obviously a husband and a dad. And how, with all the different role, like how do you even got into game design like way back then? Can you kind of share your journey? Yeah.

Rusty Lumpkin (00:51)
so I always thought that I’d love to do something creative. Like growing up, I thought I’d might want to be an author someday. And yeah, but then I quickly learned I could not stand English. As grammar was not my strong suit. Okay. But I got playing, I got sucked into the board game world. Dominion was a huge game for me, Catan was a huge game for me. Okay. And then just

Game after game, as my world exploded of different game designs, I started asking more questions about how in the world did people come up with the designs like they did. Like Captain Sonar completely blew my concept and understanding of what a game was. And so I tried starting to design some of my own, and everything I came up with was absolute junk. Like it was either

did not work or somebody else had already done it. And so with that, honestly, I was ready to be done and give up with the idea of designing entirely. And I was just gonna just enjoy games with my wife and my family. And that’s all there was going to be to it. And so it wasn’t necessarily something that I saw a path moving forward in. And I was praying one night and

And I was just spending some quiet time with the Lord. And I told him, I was like, I feel like you put this desire on my heart. But if that’s the case, you’re gonna have to help me. And like it’s craziest story because like, man, the moment I said that, like I had a design idea and a twist on a mechanism I’d never seen before. Got done out of the chair, got up, jotted down a bunch of notes, and by the next day, I had the whole rest of the game.

Jason Hsieh (02:20)
Woah! That was fast.

Rusty Lumpkin (02:20)
⁓

Yeah, it went from a skeleton concept idea that night, just like the mechanism of how it worked. The next day I was out cutting firewood and I put my chainsaw down. I spent a lot of time praying cutting firewood and hopefully that I don’t cut my leg off. But I put the chainsaw down. I called my wife and I was like, Tab, get a pencil and paper because the God gave me the rest of the game and my brain can’t hold anymore.

Jason Hsieh (02:44)
Whoa.

Which one was that? What game was that?

Rusty Lumpkin (02:46)
So okay, so that is Dawn of Kingdoms. Okay. And it is not officially come out yet. All right. And so let me explain that a little bit more because by that next weekend we had full working prototype and and then it was like, okay, well what do we do with this? and it wasn’t until my wife told me, like, okay, like in my mind

We just created a game. That’s awesome. We’ll put it in a little box, put it on the shelf, and now just be the family game. Like it was like, cool. Check mark, we created something. But not ever publish it, take it out to the world. And my wife asked me, she’s like, Well, who’s stopping you? All right. And she said, ’cause I’m not. And and it really was just like kind of like an eye opener of hold on, wait a second. All right, maybe, we can do something with this. And what was really neat about that night.

When when I truly just gave it over to the Lord, like design ideas have just constantly flowed since. And so that’s kind of really when we realize that hey, maybe there’s something here and maybe we should create a company rather than just pitch it off to somebody else and be a one and done.

So it was a big game, it was a huge game, or at least in our eyes it was a huge game, and so we weren’t quite ready to head down that route. We knew nothing about the board game industry and so we decided to actually go with one of our smaller designs. And that ended up being our game Sea of Plunder here, which

Jason Hsieh (04:08)
Okay.

Rusty Lumpkin (04:08)
way more complex and more going on than it was so yeah we went our simpler route and this ended up being a huge deep dive into trying to learn how to publish. So

Jason Hsieh (04:11)
Exactly more.

And how long does that took you from like concept to publish?

Rusty Lumpkin (04:23)
So yeah, I think from concept to publish it was probably about five, five and a half years. So it was truly okay, we have this idea. It’s on paper, it’s on cardboard, and now what in the world do we do with it? So trying to find a local artist to go about it. I had no idea anything about graphic design.

Jason Hsieh (04:29)
okay, okay.

Rusty Lumpkin (04:43)
so our artist and graphic designer, same person, Lynn Morrow, she did an awesome job and I drove her nuts because I couldn’t even change a typo. I knew nothing about what I was doing. I was trying to get what I had in my head out through an email and trying to get her to understand. And so I’m glad that we were able to meet up locally a couple times.

Jason Hsieh (05:05)
Okay,

Rusty Lumpkin (05:06)
I put her through the ringer of a thousand emails and trying to ask her to fix every little detail because I didn’t know how. But now I’ve I mean, I think since our very first design idea, it’s been about 10 years now. And so yeah, I’ve definitely had quite a learning curve and an understanding of graphic design. There’s a lot

that I can actually do and function now. So so that’s been awesome.

Jason Hsieh (05:30)
I see. And for our listeners that have never played your game, can you also kind of do a quick demo of how the rule and the game for the one that’s

Rusty Lumpkin (05:39)
so one of the awesome things about Sea of Plunder, you’re a merchant ship, you’re chasing after mysterious treasure islands, you’re dodging pirates and gathering goods along the way. But a big deal with that is going to be every turn that you have a bunch of these multi use cards that you could use for a couple different things. All right. So the big gist of it is going to be every turn you’re gonna play a card that moves your boat or does a special action, then you’re gonna play a card that moves a pirate of your choosing. So

Everybody at the tables pushing and pulling and shoving the pirates into each other. I see. And so it really excels with that group. Sea of Plunder, it really excels with that group that is it’s all about like it’s a race. You’re trying to get to these treasure islands, you’re trying to get to these port cities and gather goods, and you’re also trying to dodge the pirates along the way. So you’re making a game plan, you have a strategy, but by golly, no one else is gonna let you get to the treasure before them. So I’d say it’s got a lot of

really neat combos that you can pull with the cards and movement across the map. But it also has a little bit of that Mario Kart feel of like people are going to get in your way. People are going to throw a wrench in your game plan. They’re going to do everything to stop ya.

Jason Hsieh (06:42)
So how do you win at the end? You get to the island and you win the games? So

Rusty Lumpkin (06:46)
So the treasure islands they respawn in different locations throughout the map, but as you play, whenever somebody gets to three different treasure islands, that triggers the end of the game. But you get points based on the number of treasures that you found, you get points based on the different types of goods that you traveled around collected at the port cities, as well as if the pirates hit you and steal your goods, you could potentially end up with debt.

Jason Hsieh (06:50)
okay.

Rusty Lumpkin (07:09)
All right, because you had to pay for damages to your ship. So all of those get taken into account and that’s been really great.

Jason Hsieh (07:14)
I see. Interesting.

What is the recommended players and how long is the game gameplay?

Rusty Lumpkin (07:20)
So this is two to four players and it plays anywhere from thirty to sixty minutes.

Jason Hsieh (07:25)
okay, okay, that’s not too bad. It’s not super long. Okay. Got it, got it, got it. And I know you have designed multiple different games since then. Can you also talk about other games that you have designed over the years as well?

Rusty Lumpkin (07:35)
Yeah,

so so after Sea of Plunder, then we had camouflage, all right, and camouflage is right back here. Camouflage is a quick speed color pattern matching game. It’s think speed dominoes, right? So the concept is super simple. You have these essentially three by three cards, all right, and you’re going to try and find and overlap them and lay them out there on the map, but

There’s no turns. It’s three, two, one, go, and everybody’s building off the map as fast as they can. So hence the name Speed Dominoes. Yeah. But the name of the game is called Camouflage for a reason because the concept’s simple, but it truly plays tricks on your brain. One of the funnest parts of designing that was balancing it. But we also designed one side of the game to have these odd animal hides on them. We got some snake skins, we got some jaguar.

Hides and some funky zebra stripes. And on the other side of the cards, it’s all the exact same game, but it’s like different gems on the backside of those cards. Okay. And so the beautiful thing about that is it’s the same game, but your brain processes it totally differently. On the hide side, my wife slaughters me every single time. On the gem side, it’s the same game, but I have a shot at winning.

Jason Hsieh (08:26)
Okay.

Okay.

Okay,

interesting. Okay.

Rusty Lumpkin (08:51)
We found that it was about two thirds of the populace actually see this side better and about one third the gem side, which is really intriguing to me because when I designed the gem side, I thought that it was less busy, there was a little bit less going on, you had very defined specific shapes. I thought it’d be simpler, I thought it’d be easier for kids, so that you know adults could play on the animal hides, kids could play on the gem side, but that is not the case at all.

It just depends on your mind and the way that you view the world. We designed both sides to be colorblind friendly. And so it’s been very intriguing to me and I’m amazed that the majority of people saw it easier on the animal hide side.

Jason Hsieh (09:32)
okay. So let me understand the game correctly. So it’s like matching. You’re matching the two identical ideas. Yes.

Rusty Lumpkin (09:37)
So

Let me grab that for a second. So with these, all right, you have some these three by three cards. And on one side it has gems, other side it has hides. And so you’re trying to find. If I can find a pattern match here real quick.

Hence the name camouflage, right? So

Jason Hsieh (09:54)
Do y do they need to be a hundred percent identical in old night high?

Rusty Lumpkin (09:58)
So

so yeah, whatever you end up overlapping has to be identical itself.

Here we go. So these two cards here, you got snake skin, snakeskin, snake snake, snake snake, and here we have the jaguar. All right, and you’re gonna find a spot out there on the field that those are going to overlap. All right. And so everything that you overlap has to match perfectly. And you have to match a minimum of three squares or more. So

And it leads to a bunch of different variants that you can play in the game. Like you can base points at the end of the game on how many cards that you’re able to find and overlap, right? Rather than just finding one card to overlap, can you overlap multiple cards at the same time? are you just simply playing speed run as in like first person out of cards wins? All right, you can completely play it based on the number of squares that you overlap and cover. So you’re really looking for those corner spots.

It leads to a lot of fun with the different varieties. The games play in about five minutes and there’s over five different ways to play. So you just try a different one, go for it again. And some people really they don’t love the super fast gameplay, like it totally stresses them out. And I get that. I understand. We’ve added 49 solo puzzle cards. And so these they go and get those specific cards, all right, that are listed up here in the card. This is a one star

Jason Hsieh (11:11)
Yeah.

Rusty Lumpkin (11:17)
puzzle and then they have to find a way to overlap and create this matching pattern that you see on card. And it has one of the possible answers on the back. So we have been finding that this is a fantastic game for groups that are high energy, three to one go, super excited and super competitive, as well as just people that just want to chill, relax, have an evening where they can just

Set down and do something different than a regular puzzle, but still kind of like that Sudoku crossword puzzle mindset. All right. They are really, really eating up these solo puzzles.

Jason Hsieh (11:51)
I see. Okay, okay. So it’s a mix. You can do solo, you can do team play, it could be a party games, you can have a lot of people playing. And it’s also very fast, it looked like. Yeah. Very quick as well. Okay.

Rusty Lumpkin (12:03)
So here’s a little bit of a image of kind of what that shows when it’s all laid out. So it’s not a set board. The setup changes every single time and it’s three two one go and it just kind of grows like a giant amoeba.

Jason Hsieh (12:15)
got it, got it, got it, got it. And I think a lot of your game design kind of focusing on bringing people together and you know, with the digital world nowadays, what would you say from your perspective that the face to face game can bring that the screen couldn’t quite do that?

Rusty Lumpkin (12:31)
So so I think games as a whole just bring people together from all kinds of walks of life. Just like the number of times I go to a convention and I sit down and people over there that like just jobs that I’ve never even heard of, places in the world that I’ve never even been, right? So I get to sit down at a table and actually make face to face interaction with those and that’s been great.

Granted you can meet random people playing like a video game online and get to know somebody via the phone or you know via voice call or something like that. But when it comes to us, we truly love that face to face interaction that you get sitting at the table. Like for example, we have a number of games that we are considering putting on something like board game arena.

Okay. Okay. And so yeah, so that has a tabletop experience dot dot dot on online on a screen. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s just not the same. There are certain games that you can do well with for our game. For example, our game coming out in the future, we have Natural Chaos. It is a two player abstract strategy game, kind of that in between chess and checkers type deal.

And that works great for online for a game that you’re not gonna have much social interaction in the regards of having to read your opponent’s body language at the table. Or it’s just more that you can’t even have that conversation back and forth because you’re too busy in your head trying to make your decisions. Yeah. That works great online.

But for us, like what we really love and our game company as a whole, we strive for that interaction at the table. Like I want to sit down, I want to try to understand you. And even if we’re just playing a strategy game, I want to understand what you’re thinking, what your next move’s gonna be. I can try to do that just looking at the screen and the board state.

On the computer or at the table. But I want to look across the table. I want to see is your face relaxed? Is it stressed out? All right. Are you worried that I’m gonna take the same spot that you’re going after. As well as we have some of these games, like for example, our two games that just came out. Are you more liking Go for the Krill? Go for the Krill is all about trying to

Do a little bit of risk assessment. Like you’re a bunch of whales, you have a bunch of whales in your hand and you’re sending them chasing after these stacks of food. But the main gist of the game is if we both go after the same stack of food, then we both cancel and get nothing. So you want to be the only person going after that stack of food. And so I’m constantly looking around the table, and it’s like, ooh, this stack of food is going to give me a lot of points. But

Jason Hsieh (15:07)
Yeah.

Rusty Lumpkin (15:08)
Everybody else is gonna want that lot of points too. So maybe I need to go somewhere else. Or is everybody else thinking that same thing? And everybody else is chickened out right now. They’re too afraid to go after this stack of food. So maybe now this is the time I need to go after it. And so awesome with this is all the cards that you have are kind of like a one time use. Okay. And so as the game plays, you can tell that Bob, Frank, and George have all used their number 10.

So they can’t go after the 10 anymore. But Susan over here, she’s the one that you got to watch. She still has a 10. So I’m just trying to understand and read her at the table. And therefore I’m trying to get in her mind. And I can’t do that.

Jason Hsieh (15:46)
I like poker games. Yeah. Online poker and in person poker very different.

Rusty Lumpkin (15:50)
Absolutely. Yeah. So a completely different feel and I we could put the game on BGA and we probably will someday. But it’s just not gonna have the same feel.

Jason Hsieh (15:59)
Same, yeah, it’s not the same impact. It’s just the interaction and how people is kind of interact and related with each other totally different, just like you say.

Rusty Lumpkin (16:08)
Yeah. And our game, Are You More Like? Are You More Like is a game about that conversational game. It’s more on a personal level. It’s a get to know you slash see how well you know each other type of game. And it is just top notch. And it’s one of those that conversations go places that you never would have dreamed. All right. I’ve seen conversations that

Every now and then like somebody will make a play and then discuss it and it can stay surface level. And then out of nowhere, a card or an item that that person relates to just causes them to go deep in a way that I just was not expecting. And I’ve seen amazing conversations. There’s the

what you look at at the table there and it will cause you to process through yourself and you’ll make connections for yourself that you’ve never made before. And so there’s friends and family that I’ve played this game with and I’ve known them for all my entire life. And then all of a sudden I get to see everything finally start to make sense. Or I view it from a new light that I just it’s something special about the game, but man, I

There it’s a game I would never be able to put online.

Jason Hsieh (17:14)
I see. I also want to dive into your background because I know you’re also a teacher and a youth pastor. How does that influence the type of the game you create and your thinking and designing process?

Rusty Lumpkin (17:25)
Okay, so that’s a great question. All right. One thing that you’ll notice about our games is we have a wide variety of different types of games that we’re working on and have coming out, which is a little different for a company because like most companies you have like, they have their niche that they kind of stick to. Like they have this style game. And so they have kind of like a loyal following of this is my type of game, this is what I’m going after. Yeah.

But I will say I’ve been super amazed at our loyal following as well, even with the huge variety of games that we put out. Like at a con we do events and different things, had a bunch of people sit down and it’s like, okay, what stood out about this game? And they’re like, Because you guys put it out and we’ve loved everything else you’ve done. So that just absolutely warmed my heart. But when it comes to the youth group, when it comes to teaching.

I get to test a lot of different games on a lot of those students. And it’s really nice because I have a wide variety of interests and likes and so I’ve had a very diverse catalog of playtesters that have been able to come through and I feel like rather than just like a specific niche gamer category, trying the game over and over again.

We a lot of input from all over the place. Kids that have never played games, kids that have played tons of games, as well as yeah, so I’d say very diverse feedback before we ever get a chance to actually take it out into conventions.

Jason Hsieh (18:50)
Got it, got it, got it. And like looking back, what has been some of the biggest challenge in getting your games into players’ hand and what are some of the strategies you have tried so far?

Rusty Lumpkin (18:59)
So so for me, I am in the middle of a very rural area of Indiana. There are very few other game companies that I knew getting into this. And the hardest thing for me is I had nobody to ask questions. And a matter of fact, I lived in a rural area, at least back when I was getting into gaming, that there weren’t even a lot of people playing games. So most of the games I knew were the

personal games on my shelf. And so getting into the gaming industry, I didn’t have people to ask questions of like, hey, when you were here, how do you solve this issue? Yeah. And so I feel like still our company’s very much in its infancy of getting

Jason Hsieh (19:25)
Yeah, yeah.

Rusty Lumpkin (19:42)
our legs rolling and moving and trying to get games into people’s hands. So Kickstarter has been our biggest thing is like it here, here’s here we are world. Come check out our stuff. And then our local game events, all right. So local markets, that has been a big deal. We we tried going through some consolidators all right with our first game Sea of Plunder.

And we got games out quite a few places all over the world, but the profit margins by the time you go distributor, consolidator, all right, as well as retail, there’s just so many middlemen that the profit margin wasn’t feasible for all the time and stuff that we’re putting into it. It just wasn’t happening. So yeah, we’re trying to get better at social media, we’re trying to

push towards getting our product on Amazon. As much as I’d love to be able to do more of retail and just straight through distribution rather than cut out some of the middlemen to make that a little bit more feasible for us. Right now Amazon I think might be our best option and so that we have a chance to grow and then hopefully we can do both of those tandems.

Jason Hsieh (20:48)
Yeah, and thank you for trusting our team on helping you on the Amazon effort. I think Amazon would definitely a very good platform for the type of game that you have that people can find it a little bit easier. And I think going to the show is also definitely very good for you to continue to grow your influence and growing with your audience. But looking ahead, what are some of the projects that excite you the most about any upcoming release or any future game that you’re working on?

Rusty Lumpkin (21:14)
yeah, so one of our next releases that we have is this game Natural Chaos. All right. So we’re stoked about that one that then that’s gonna have like some 3D injection molded pieces to it. So that’s a new venture that we’ve never done before. So we’re stoked about that. And but one of the other big items that we’re really excited about is that Dawn of Kingdoms.

It’s been a number of years that we took it, put it on the shelf and we said, you know what, when we do this, we’re gonna do it right. And so we finally have started taking it back off the shelf. And first off, we dusted off everything, had a big game night, and it’s like, okay, hold on, our memories of this game versus like what it is in reality, does it still reach up to par with what we remember? And absolutely. The moment we got done

playing that playtesting, none of the guys were wanting to change any major item, but they instantly dove into nitpicking and balancing. And so for me I was over the moon because it was like there’s no major issue with the game. It’s just now down to the fine balancing. So we’re stoked about that and we’re excited to put a vision on it and like start heading out towards contracting art for it. So

Those are some of our big ones that we have coming up.

Jason Hsieh (22:24)
Thank you for sharing. So as we’re kind of wrapping up today’s interview, if you look back in your journey of building the publishing companies and what would be one piece of advice you’ll share with someone that’s getting started within the toys and game industry?

Rusty Lumpkin (22:38)
my number one encouragement would be reach out more. Reach out more to people, even if you don’t know I’m never been real big on social media and I wish I’d been more confident to just ask questions. And yes, there were some that kind of blew me off when I did ask questions, but it is a very friendly

community and so reach out to other publishers because they’ve been in your shoes before. So yeah. I wish I had been able to have the confidence to reach out and meet up in person or even video calls so that I could ask somebody, hey, how did you overcome this? what is your advice? All right, because I’m learning that there’s so many things that I was like

I don’t know how other companies are doing this. Like the feeds and the costs. Unfeasible. And so then but there’s been so many questions I didn’t know to ask that I had to ask. And some of those I didn’t know until I was just having conversation with another publisher. And they’re like, yeah, yeah, I remember having that issue. Here’s how you fix that.

Jason Hsieh (23:22)
Like

Rusty Lumpkin (23:39)
or here’s the loophole to get around that. And it’s like nobody tells you this. Like it’s not online or on the internet somewhere. And so that’s a big one, as well as like one thing that we have always struggled with. I love game design, I love people, I love the interaction. I am not a salesman. And so that’s my weakness. So it’s so know your weaknesses

Hopefully I become a much, much better salesman and I’m working at that. But I don’t ever wanna shoot anybody in the wrong direction. Like I don’t wanna sell you on something of my game and then you pick it up and you’re like, that’s not what that was at all. I want you to know what you’re getting. I want you to be excited about getting it and love every detail of

So I’m excited to partner with you guys, Toy Launch, to be able to help me in my marketing understanding and help on helping us push onto Amazon. And there’s been so much of that that I have too many other irons in the fire and to be able to hand that off to you guys and trust you guys and know that you guys have our best interest at heart as well. And I’m stoked at our future and what we’re doing together.

Jason Hsieh (24:42)
Of course, thank you so much. And so wrapping up, for our audience that’s interested to learn more about you and your company, where is the best place for people to find you online?

Rusty Lumpkin (24:50)
So the best place to find us online is threenailgames.Com. So http://www.Threenailgames.Com and pretty much any social media platform, and we are always at three nail games. And that’s all spelled out. T H R E E nail N A I L Games. And that’s where you can find us.

Jason Hsieh (25:10)
Got it. Okay. We’ll make sure we put that in the show note. So again, thank you so much for your time and to sharing your experience and your journey within the industry so far.

Rusty Lumpkin (25:20)
Yeah, yeah. Thanks for having me here.

Jason Hsieh (25:22)
And thank you so much for our audience for tuning in to this episode of Toy Business Unboxed Podcast. We hope you have enjoyed today’s conversation and find it insightful and inspiring. If you like what you have heard, be sure to subscribe to podcast and your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. We really appreciate your support. And if you could, please leave us a review and share the podcast with your friend and colleague within the toys and game industry. For more resource, tips and within the toys and game industry, visit our website at toy-launch.Com.

You can also join our free Facebook community, Toys and Games Launchpad, where toy creator, inventor, and entrepreneur connect, share ideas, and learn how to grow each other’s businesses. Just search Toy Games Launchpad on Facebook and you’ll find our free Facebook group. So until next time, keep innovating, keep creating, keep bringing joys through toys. This is Jason Hsieh, signing off on the Toy Business Unboxed Podcast. We’ll see you in the next episode. Thank you so much, everyone.