HotShot Pickleball

HotShot Pickleball

Pick your pickle, then dink, volley, and long shot your way to victory! An all-ages, fast-paced, pun-filled and fun-tastic board game.

Fast-paced and pun-filled

HotShot Pickleball is a fast-paced, pun-filled board game for 1-4 players that takes 20-40 minutes to play. 

Play RALLY cards from your hand to help you move to the ball and hit it back over the net, or take a risk and pull a LONG SHOT card. But watch out: some of those cards are great, and others… not so great.

All the fun of the fastest growing sport in the world

HotShot Pickleball celebrates all the fun of the fastest growing sport in the world through a fast-paced, engaging board game that’s quick to learn and easy to explain. 

A perfect addition to game night

Regardless of whether you play Pickleball on a regular basis or have never heard of it before, HotShot Pickleball is a fun addition to any game night.

Some of the components shown here are from our pre-production prototype and might not be totally matchy-matchy with the final game.



To add a pinch of spice to this brine, we’re cooking up a couple of add-ons to party-fy your game. They aren’t necessary at all to play the game, but if you’re the kind of person who likes to sample every flavor of pickle at the pickle bar, these are for you.

Other than a healthy bit of stretching before a game, we don’t have any stretch goals. Everything you need to play and enjoy HotShot Pickleball will be included with the game, right from the get-go. We thought about adding a real pickle to every box, but couldn’t decide on a spice level so we passed on the idea.

When Gelb first set-out to design HotShot Pickleball, he wanted something easy to learn (his ADHD makes reading long rulebooks tough), quick to play, and strategic enough to stand up to multiple plays. Also there had to be lots of puns and the silliness factor needed to be up near 11.


When we showed the game to other people, we found different folks who seemed to really (and we mean really, really) love to play and who kept asking us when they could buy it. Some of those people were: 


Casual gamers

Folks who enjoy having friends over for game nights or taking some games down to a pub or cafe love the quick setup, funny art, and its fast-paced game-play.


Serious gamers

Whether as a warm-up or cool-down before or after a marathon session, we were surprised about how many Eurogamers and 3+ BGG weight board gamers really enjoyed playing HotShot Pickleball. They cited replayability and a surprising amount of strategic options as reasons they’ll keep coming back.


Families

The puns are groaners, the art is silly, but everything HotShot is family-friendly. We love seeing how grandparents and their grandkids play HotShot Pickleball together, which often results in both getting surprisingly competitive and thinking strategically in the process! 


Pickleball fans

This might seem obvious but you never know how other fans of a sport you love might react to a board game version. Luckily we’ve been fortunate to have lots of really positive reviews about our silly game from people who take the sport super seriously. Pickleball players have said they were surprised by how close HotShot Pickleball felt to the actual game and how perfect it'd be on rainy days or when they're not really feeling the real thing. 


Fans of Pickles

Whether you love pickles or can’t stand the briny sight of them, we really do think you should give HotShot Pickleball a shot.

HotShot Pickleball is designed by Robert Gelb, with art by Brad Slavin, and is published by Midnight Trading Co


It was brought to life by a group of creatives from Edinburgh, Vancouver, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Egypt.


Game Design: Robert Gelb

Artist: Brad Slavin

Additional Game Design: Andy Law

Wordsmithing & Copywriting: Stuart Lovinggood

Sales & Partnerships: Brennan Shanks

Operations: Amy Wallace

Assistant: Samaa Shokry

Social Media: Kate Primrose

A note from Gelb, the game designer

Hi there! I'm Gelb, the game designer of HotShot Pickleball. To say blood, sweat, and tears went into this game is a bit of an understatement. During the research and development stage, I ran full throttle into playing Pickleball. So much so that I managed to completely tear my achilles. Being confined to an aircast boot for 9 weeks was definitely not fun, but I will admit, it was pretty funny.


I've been interested in developing games for a while but I'd always dismissed the idea, not quite being able to see anything creative as more than a hobby. Seeing myself as a professional creative always felt like something I'd never be able to do.


After getting diagnosed with ADHD and experiencing pretty intense burnout, I knew something had to change. I started giving the creative voice a little more air and tried to quieten the negative self-talk.


The result was making the decision to jump into the deep end and build games! Together with my wife/operations maven Amy Wallace, we started Midnight Trading Co. Our vision is to release games that are fun, fast-paced, and feel novel, and our goal is to inspire moments of unexpected delight. We currently have 4 games in various stages of development. 


HotShot Pickleball couldn't have happened, and wouldn't have looked as incredible as it does, without the artistic talents of Brad Slavin. I will always love seeing the player reactions to Brad's beautiful creations. From the hilarious HotShots to the designs of the cards, court and box, Brad did an amazing job throughout. Thank you, Brad! 


Speaking of player reactions, thank you to all our play testers and those who gave us feedback along the way! There are too many of you to list individually here, but look out for your name in the rule book.

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