Animal mating science meets party game fun
With your team of fellow feral naturalists, analyze specimens, answer queries, estimate measurements, and craft illustrations—all exploring animal mating behaviors and anatomy. For 4-8 players, ages 17 and up.
Guess the answer to wild questions, and collaborate with your team to score!
Sexual Selection
Which absurd choice is correct?
Mutual Drawer-gasm
Race to sketch a hilarious prompt.
Mystery Mate
Which creature’s parts are in the photo?
Size Matters
Guess on a wild number query.
“From the moment we opened it, we were laughing and engaged in conversations that we never thought we’d have. It’s super easy to play, wildly entertaining, funny and educational!”
Educational and Unhinged
Find out how animal mating science meets party game fun.
Party Game Fun
Players collaborate to speculate wildly about science-based questions. Each card offers a challenge, answer, and bonus fact, sparking debate and discovery each round.
Animal Mating Science
Drawing from more than 100 studies, the game is designed to engage players with scientific research in a playful, discussion-driven format that sparks curiosity about the natural world.
After the Adventure
Extend your expedition beyond the table. Peek at the research, collect the art, or send in your field notes from the wild.
Shop the Game Art
Bring the feral beauty of Mate home. Explore prints and illustrations straight from the game, available as high-quality art prints.
Submit a Field Report
Played Mate? Share stories, sketches, and sightings from your expedition into the wild world of animal mating.
Check Out Our Sources
Curious where all this wild animal knowledge comes from? Browse the studies, books, and research that inspired Mate.
“I found the game delightful and a lovely balance of fun, adult, and nerdy.”
Press
Portland Monthly
“The Wisconsin-raised sisters… are behind a lightly bawdy, Kickstarter-funded game called Mate, which schools players on animal mating behaviors and anatomy.”
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Portland Tribune
“It’s educational. It’s empowering. It’s dirty. A new card game created by a pair of Portland-based sisters is hoping to teach people about the wild world of animal mating practices.”
Read →
Winner’s Bias
We talk about turning animal mating habits into a game, creating a game using the concepts of Universal design, and how you know when you’re done making questions for a trivia game.
Listen →
Mate: The Party Game for Feral Naturalists
Animal mating science meets party game fun. With your team of fellow feral naturalists, analyze specimens, answer queries, estimate measurements, and craft illustrations—all exploring animal mating behaviors and anatomy. For 4-8 players, ages 17 and up.
In stock (can be backordered)
100% women-created and owned!
Christa Berce
Co-Founder & Creator
Gina Lipor
Co-Founder & Creator
My Truong
Designer & Illustrator
Robin Corbo
Linocut Artist
FAQs
Who are you?
We are two sisters in Portland, Oregon who want to have fun, build community, and be part of creating a better world. Our humanities education, background in STEM fields, and experience as neurodivergent women has culminated in this curious concoction of humor, history, and science. Learn more about us (and see a 90s-era photo of us in matching vests).
Where did the idea for Mate come from?
It all started in 2020 when we came upon an image of a whale threesome. Read the full story of how a random photo evolved into The Party Game for Feral Naturalists.
Wtf is a feral naturalist?
A feral naturalist is someone who exists within the natural world with curiosity and imagination. Rather than trying to categorize and control, they experience joy and community by reveling in the feral wildness. Humans have lived—and still do—in this way since the beginning of time. Anyone can become a feral naturalist—it might just take some un/learning, and that’s exactly what Mate is here for!
What does a game about animal mating have to do with creating a better world?
The world we know today is shaped by the findings of a bunch of white bros from 200-400 years ago, who were—like we are now—steeped in oppressive views on race, gender, ability, and sexuality. Their interpretations still fuel modern structures and biases. Moving forward means becoming curious about these influences and questioning inherited rules and binaries.
By connecting with the natural world, we can see how many of these constraints and categories are pure fiction, freeing us to celebrate nature’s full, feral range—including our own. And forget the myth of militant feminists who want to abolish fun; we know this is a joyful and hilariously eye-opening adventure—and best of all, shared in community.
Join the party
Hear about new stuff and help us with game development!