CHEW: Cases of the FDA started witha tweet from series creator John Layman.He’d invented a game based off his comicand he was incredibly excited about it.Being the CHEW fans that we are, we immediately reached out for a protoype.Good sport that he is, John sent over aprint-and-play of what turned out to be thebuilding blocks of a light, fun, investigativegame that was plenty long on humor and gore (collecting body parts was a major mechanic).

of what has happened to that object. Thismakes Tony an excellent field agent, nomatter what his boss might say, and overthe course of 47 issues at the time of thiswriting, Tony has been closing food-relatedcrimes with the help of an ensemble ofcharacters featuring all kinds of other food-related powers.

CHEW: Cases of the FDA has a lot ofover-the-top humor, and rather than beingan investigative procedural, it’s more of arollercoaster ride that ends up with the carcoming off the rails and landing right onthe villain’s doorstep. When creating thegame, we wanted to make sure that we gotsomething that straddled the line betweenCloseau and Holmes, and that’s wheregame designer Kevin Wilson came in.

Kevin took to the material immediately.After getting a feel for the weight, playercount, and style of game we were lookingfor, he went into his lab and emerged amonth later with a great game! Playerswould be given a case and a culprit at thebeginning of the game, and their job wouldbe to gather enough evidence to make thearrest. This felt perfectly in tune to theCHEW universe, where the villains areoften obvious, but their motives can be

That initial protoype led to IDW Gamessecuring the rights to do card, board, dice,and roleplaying games based off theCHEW graphic-novel series (and yes, we plan on doing all those things as fast as possible).

If you’re not familiar with the series,CHEW revolves around FDA agent TonyChu. Tony’s what is known as a “cibopath,”meaning that just by taking a bite of something he can get a psychic sensation

by Nate Murray

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CHEW:Cases of the FDA

Declassified behind-the-scenes info

provided by IDW GAMES

mysterious. There was only one issue —he’d built in a drinking variant. Some cardswere marked with small purple shot glasses,indicating that players would take a drink(of beet juice, or whatever’s handy) whenplaying any piece of evidence or an investi-gation card with that icon. It was obviouslya fun twist, but one we were a bit nervousto present Layman with. We didn’t wanthim thinking that we had taken the sourcematerial lightly. Luckily, when the materialwent over to him for approval, a big “Hellyes!” came back regarding the variant, andwe were set to start working!

From the beginning, both John Laymanand Rob Guillory were intimately involvedin the process. As Kevin sent over his cardcounts and rough ideas for what kind ofthings should constitute evidence, thingslike Space Babies, cremated corpses, andinebriated astronauts, John would jump onthe list and tweak and place things slightlyto make sure that everything was both thematic and appropriately powerful.

Rounds of notes circulated for weeks, asevidence and card powers were juggled,balanced, and honed into the final product. It is a mark of great game designthat Kevin’s knowledge of the materialshines through in even the subtlest card interactions. A great example of this is inthe Chow Chu card. Chow is Tony’s brother, and in the comic every time Tonyturns up in Chow’s life, he screws things upfor him. Things play out for Chow the

same way in the card game: if a playerbrings out Tony, Chow is immediately discarded (poor Chow!).

Once all the building blocks were in place,Layman sat down and wrote all of the flavor text for each card, adding a last layerof humor that really gives the game the feelit had to have to live up to the name. Onthe development process, Layman said,“Rob and I have been involved with oroverseen every step of development of thisgame. From picking art to writing up flavorquotes to recommending who should have what powers, it’s been an inclusive experience, and I’m incredibly pleased with the end results.”

Along with pick-up art from the comic,Rob provided several original images, including what has to be one of the mosthilarious and awesome game covers youwill see at a game shop this year. TheCHEW: Cases of the FDA cover ishomage to the Dogs Playing Poker trope,but instead of mutts with flushes andstraights, it features characters from thecomics sitting around playing CHEW:Cases of the FDA!

Rob was a great sport the whole waythrough, and when it was all over hesummed up his thoughts on the processsuccinctly: “Never in my wildest dreamsdid I ever think that the art I was makingfor our weird little comic would end up ina card game, let alone a game this fun. It’s

really surreal and freaking awesome to seewhat the fine folks at IDW Games didwith CHEW: Cases of the FDA.”

So there is the story behind what we hopewill be a game that you play all summerlong. If you like quirky humor, take-thatgameplay and want to bust perps by gathering up exploding cows, wormy sushi,and a buried body, then CHEW: Cases of the FDA could be the game for you.

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Nate Murray does product management andmarketing for IDW Games. He’sworked on IDW’s breakouthit, MMachi Koro as well as theupcoming CHEW: Cases of theFDA. He also claims to be unde-feated at Air Hockey.