I bet that there is a pen near you now. When you pick it up, what do you notice? What comes to mind? Is it the color of the ink? The brand of the pen? How about its war cry as it plummets fifty stories to its demise? My dad once showed me and my brother a game he used to play when he was a kid in Nigeria called “the pen game.” Each player found a pen or pencil and took turns flicking them across a table in attempts to knock the other player’s pen off. We began to personify these pens, giving them names and imagining mighty warriors in a grand colosseum, swinging blades and ink-splattered clubs to claim victory and eternal glory. My dad told us how popular the game was in his high school, and I quickly realized why that was: the game made you look at the world differently. It was not confined to a box or a screen; it penetrated your mind every time you saw your pen. Even now, when I pick up a pen with an uneven center of balance, I can visualize how a well placed flick could launch the spinning ax across the table. One game changed the way I see pens forever. Games are different from a book or movie because rather than watching or reading the story, you are living it. I have tried to apply this idea to my own games. I started designing board games during the covid pandemic, and every one I made had the goal of changing the way you saw the world. My very first board game, “Rocks!,” was crude and simple, but the research that I had to do to make the game realistic was grueling enough to change the way I saw rocks. Even a simple board game with minimal moving parts took days to complete, but the look of excitement on my friends’ faces as we first played made it all worthwhile. Since that first game, I have designed and made over 25 unique games, putting in countless hours over the last 2 years to pursue my passion for these projects. I plan to make even more, and one day hope to change the world with one of my games. To start on this ambitious journey, I have begun to gift personalized board games to my friends for their birthdays, and this has been (quite literally) a game changer for me. I can now see the tangible impacts of games I make. This inspired me to make the "Harry Potter Wizards Duel Card Game" for my Hogwarts-obsessed friend Sierra, and "Food in a Bag", a fast-paced fast food game for my Crumbl-Cookie-employed friend Sam. From the band kid craze of the “Mr. Mcallister Trading Card Game” to “Tommy’s Backyard: The Board Game”, my most successful and impactful board game to date, I have seen connections form and strengthen like never before because of a world that I created. I aspire to one day make something that changes the way people see the world. I want them to see a pen and get inspired with a new story. I want to meet interesting and fantastic people that inspire me to make bigger and better games. I want to use the best resources available to grow as a designer and creator. I want to engineer outside-the-box, never-before-seen solutions to problems in ways so fresh and new that they reshape perspectives. Because sometimes, all the inspiration you need is in the palm of your hand.