“It’s Cards Against Humanity meets Labubu…”: McMiller’s Julian Miller on Dummeez, JOLT and It’s Bananas: After Dark Edition

Julian, it’s great to catch up. How was Toy Fair season for McMiller?
It has been absolutely wild, in the best possible way. We’ve been working hard to bring new ideas into the game space, and the response from international distributors and retailers has been incredible. Being back on the floor and connecting with everyone in person again makes such a difference. This was our second year doing the fairs, and it keeps proving its worth tenfold.

The community around toys and games is genuinely like no other – warm, creative and passionate – and we genuinely can’t get enough of it. Our new game, JOLT, was a real standout moment for us. It is a nice departure from our more zany, physical games, and it pulled in a completely different crowd, which was exciting to see. It caught Walmart’s attention at the NY Toy Fair, and they are placing it this year. That is a pretty big deal for us because this year is also the first year they are placing It’s Bananas.

Yes, let’s dive into JOLT. Where did the idea spring from?
We wanted to gamify the positive and negative pull of magnets in motion. Much like shuffleboard or curling, you slide your magnet down the track to score big; however, if it snaps to another, it’s out. The clever bit is that you have to look down the track and decide whether to slide the negative or positive side up, so you are constantly navigating the landscape while trying to pull in the points. It is simple but has lots of replayability, which we are very proud of.

It came from us playing around with magnets and realising there was a huge amount of untapped potential. The polarity mechanic felt like a completely open space; nobody had really used it to create strategic depth in a family game. Once we clocked that, and combined it with magnets in motion, it all clicked into place –pun intended.

Pun appreciated! Now, Dummeez! This was the only game I played over Toy Fair that resulted in me yelling ‘Spitroast!’ If anyone reading remains on the fence after that, how would you pitch it?
Think adult charades but with toys; you are making them perform wild, crazy, and obscene acts while your team tries to guess. It is Cards Against Humanity meets Labubu.

Every correct guess scores a point for the whole team, but after each point, the team must make a decision: stop playing and bank the points to play it safe, or risk it and keep going? If the timer runs out while you are still guessing, you lose everything. Teams rotate every round, so you are constantly acting alongside a fresh bunch of idiots, and after four rounds, the player with the most points wins. Everyone else is a ‘dummee,’ naturally. It is fast, it’s filthy, and it is absolutely hilarious.

‘Cards Against Humanity meets Labubu’ is the perfect pitch! Where did the idea for Dummeez come from?
We kept hearing that Charades was ‘dead’ – at no point should you ever pitch a Charades game to a buyer – and that challenge excited us. The problem with charades in 2026 is that people don’t always want to get on their feet and pretend to be a chicken; it’s too much effort. That is when we got the idea to take two funny little ‘dummeez’ and use them to act things out on your behalf. Using words felt too easy, so we discovered that only using sound effects – squish, squelch, ‘ugh ugh’ – took the comedy to the next level. Add a hot-potato-style pressure element to that, and you’ve got carnage in the best possible way.

And what steered where you went with the design of these two characters?
Like with anything, it took a while to really nail the characters. They needed strong shelf appeal, had to communicate the tone of the game – which is raunchy and wild – but they also had to stay kind of cute with an edge. We went through a lot of iterations before we found the version that felt right, the one where you look at them and just know what kind of game it’s going to be.

Sticking with raunchy, It’s Bananas is getting an After Dark edition. What prompted this new version?
A few things converged at once, really. People have been asking for a version that accommodates more players at the same time; the original is brilliant, but there is definitely an appetite for something that can scale up for bigger groups. We also do really well in the hen party market with It’s Bananas, and we’ve always wanted to push the envelope a bit with that crowd. They are up for anything, and frankly, the original game was just the beginning.

So After Dark felt like the natural next step, something that takes everything people love about It’s Bananas and cranks it up. Think ‘dry humping in a box,’ with crotches and bums in faces; take a physical party game and a friendship group to the limits. Strap on your banana and take on challenges you absolutely cannot talk about at work the next day. We knew we could really up the ante with it, and we were genuinely excited to go there.

You had me at ‘dry humping in a box’. Now, can you talk us through the process you go through when deciding which games to publish next? What helps you green-light something?
It’s always evolving, but it starts with gut instinct: Is this something we actually want to play ourselves? That is the first filter. Then we look at the market: Is there anything similar already out there? If so, can we differentiate ourselves enough to make our version worth existing? If the answer to both is yes, we go deep.

Testing is absolutely everything for us. We always try to design for a broad range of people, so we make a point of getting a ton of different people to play our concepts, crucially, people who aren’t hardcore gamers. If we can hook someone who wouldn’t normally pick up a board game, we know we’re onto something. The bar is: Can we make this fun for everyone? If yes, we’re doing our job.

And do you ever disagree on what should launch next?
Honestly? Not really, and I think that’s because common sense usually prevails. When something is right, you both feel it. And when it isn’t, you feel that too, even if you don’t want to admit it immediately. There have been a few moments where we’ve gone ahead with something despite reservations, and yeah, sometimes it doesn’t land the way you hoped, but you always learn a ton from those experiences. We try to approach everything with open eyes and use the misses as much as the hits to sharpen how we think. That probably keeps us more aligned than anything else.

Last question! What do you feel is McMiller’s most underrated game? We’ll give it some love here!
I still have such a soft spot for Fire In The Hole. The Kickstarter did amazingly, but for whatever reason, we weren’t able to translate that momentum online in the way we hoped. Which is a shame, because it is such a special game. It is beautifully crafted, a gorgeous pop-up pirate ship, felt cannonballs, and cotton eye patches, the whole thing is just a joy to hold and look at.

The gameplay has these brilliant highs and lows: you’re flying and you’re almost there, then a sabotage card hits and everything flips in a second. It is genuinely thrilling. But yeah, somehow it just didn’t go as mass-market as it deserved to. Hopefully, one day we’ll find a way to give it the audience it has earned.

Absolutely – terrific game. Thanks again Julian, and good luck with this exciting new slate of games.

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