Burnout is a satirical board game that aims to normalise conversations surrounding mental health & burnout
1 in 3 Singapore workers reported facing work-related stress or burnout, according to the Ministry of Manpower.
For many here, that statistic won’t come as a surprise. The feeling of losing purpose at work—of going through the motions without meaning—is something a lot of Singaporeans know quietly and well.
Burnout isn’t always about being crushed by workload. It can also creep in through the opposite: work that is monotonous, hollow, or stripped of purpose. That quieter variant even has a name, “boreout,” and it can be just as debilitating.
Suren Rastogi, 37, has lived on both sides of it. And instead of just recovering from burnout, he built a board game around it—one that has since captured the attention of players well beyond Singapore.
Leaving their jobs to build a board game
Suren has spent 15 years in marketing—PR agencies, OCBC’s social media team, an AI startup—without ever calling himself a gamer. His co-founder, Jannis Lim, 27, came from two to three years in events. They met through pure coincidence when Jannis’ boyfriend had been Suren’s intern at the bank.
When ChatGPT launched, Suren had an uncomfortable realisation. “I don’t know whether my marketing industry is going to go down,” he recalled.
As such, he wanted to create something physical and tangible “as a way to protect [him]self” from the rapidly advancing age of technology. Suren then reached out to his former intern, whom he remembered had a strong interest in games. Jannis happened to be there, and wanting to try something new, the three of them joined hands and started building something out of nothing.
Personally, Suren had experienced both sides of burnout. Early in his career, he was promoted to manager despite having no prior experience. As such, the stress came from overwork and poor communication. Later, at an AI startup, the problem was the opposite: being paid to do nothing, with no marketing budget and no clear purpose.
Burnout, he realised, isn’t just about having too much to do. It can also come from having too little.
The trio had no prior board game building experience, so they started playing less mechanically demanding games and researching obsessively. At the same time, they realised that game design was learnable, and the board game industry was growing fast.
More importantly, almost every conversation they had with their friends circled back to the same frustrations: “Their boss, their work, their colleagues,” Suren said. “We thought, let’s create a game around this. It would be meaningful.”
In Mar 2022, Laughing Sticks, the company behind Burnout, was founded by Suren and Jannis, with Jannis’ boyfriend helping the duo out on the side while both co-founders kept this as their main side hustle alongside their day jobs.
Playtests began with paper cards, hand-drawn boards, and a deliberate decision to avoid asking direct friends and family to try out for fear of biased responses. Instead, they invited friends of friends for the playtests, and to the co-founders’ surprise, strangers at sessions were photographing the crude prototypes and posting them on Instagram.
“We felt we were onto something,” Suren said. “But to turn this into a business, at least one of us had to go full-time.”
As such, Suren quit in Jul 2022, and Jannis followed about three years later. The lifestyle adjustment was immediate—business-class holidays became day trips to JB, restaurants became home cooking.
While both founders work on the game, Jannis takes ownership of events, booth production, and all social content across Instagram and TikTok, while Suren handles more of the backend technological stuff.
It took them S$42K & 18 prototypes
Burnout is a light satirical party game that is built around one promotion spot that all players compete for. Victory depends not on hitting KPIs but on reputation, because “in the real world, people don’t care whether you hit your KPIs. It’s whether you’re visible or not.”
The differentiator is a mental health counter. Let it hit zero, a player burns out, and their reputation crashes with it. “No other game has a mental health counter,” Suren said. “It makes it a lot more relatable to real life.”
The first prototype took eight to nine months, with the Laughing Sticks team playing various board games daily, dissecting mechanics in detail in between—learning everything from UI/UX principles for card design to manufacturing, component sourcing, and website development.
You kind of learn everything on the fly. For instance, you can’t put things in the corners because people hold cards from the corners.
Suren Rastogi
Overall, the duo went through roughly 17 to 18 prototypes before making it to the latest version, which has undergone testing since 2023.
Of course, there were challenges along the way. Some playtests didn’t go as expected, while others were met with scepticism and criticism. In one instance, players following the rulebook managed to finish what was meant to be a 45-minute game in just two minutes.
“We’d spent weeks building that move, thinking about the wording,” Suren said. “And they’re like, ‘It sucks. It doesn’t work.’ You need thick skin.”
After two years of building, Burnout was ready to be fully played by the public in 2024. Since then, 30 to 40 physical copies of their latest prototype have been manufactured for Laughing Sticks’ partner workshops, global content creators, and internal use.
For the duo, artwork was the biggest bottleneck in the progression of the game as their artist worked full-time elsewhere, fitting in on Wednesday nights and weekends. Art costs alone totalled S$8,500, and waiting for it stretched over a year.
Laughing Sticks has chosen to manufacture its cards in China. Suren said the team also explored options in Malaysia, India, and locally in Singapore, but none came close in terms of cost and efficiency.
Shipping, however, remains the biggest challenge. As the plan is not to sell just in Singapore, delivering a single unit to other markets like the US typically costs about US$35—effectively wiping out any margin. The solution is bulk shipping to international hubs, followed by local distribution.
To date, Suren and Jannis shared that they have invested a total of approximately S$42,000. That includes S$9,000 in event costs, S$15,000 in digital marketing, S$1,000 in software subscriptions, and S$6,000 in annual accounting and admin.
Building credibility through events
For the past two years, Laughing Sticks has been actively showcasing its games at events such as TableCon Quest (2025), Hobbies Fair 2025 (returning Jun 2026), the Asian Civilisations Museum’s Let’s Play events—where Burnout holds a permanent spot at the museum’s booth—and the Asian Board Game Festival 2025.
The most strategically significant event was SPIEL Essen 2025 in Germany, the world’s largest board game fair. First-time designers face a credibility gap on Kickstarter: backers pay upfront, wait up to a year for delivery, and worry about never seeing the product.
We wanted to de-risk it. Go to the biggest board game fair in the world, show the game to people there, and you kind of have that credibility.
Suren Rastogi
At the event, the game resonated strongly with attendees across a wide range of industries, including consulting and law. To further expand its presence in these markets, Laughing Sticks also invested heavily in international marketing efforts.
A large portion of its spending went into digital advertising on Instagram and Meta, targeting audiences in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Europe, and the US—costing even more than the trip to Germany itself.
Back home, the Singapore board game community proved unexpectedly open. Suren pointed to the #laiplayleow platform, which runs one of the city’s largest board game communities and hosts a monthly forum where aspiring and experienced designers share knowledge on legal, shipping, and manufacturing challenges.
Burnout has also managed to forge several meaningful partnerships. Psyched4Work, which conducts corporate mental health workshops, uses the game as a conversation starter in companies and schools. Meanwhile, Teamwork Unlocked has integrated Burnout into its leadership development programmes.
They reached their Kickstarter funding goal in 10 mins
If the reception so far proved anything, it was that the game had real potential to scale.
To fund production of Burnout, Laughing Sticks turned to Kickstarter, launching the campaign last month on Apr 10.
The team initially expected to hit their funding goal in three days. Instead, they reached it in just 10 minutes.
It was just panic. We had to rush out emails, inform backers. We thought we’d have one to two days to prepare.
Suren Rastogi
Expected to raise S$50,000, the campaign is already nearing S$90,000, with the S$100,000 mark looking achievable. Over 1,000 people have pre-ordered the game.
But the milestone Suren treasures most is quieter: a DM from a player who recognised her own behaviour in a card about bosses who repeatedly second-guess project details. “She decided to trust her team more,” Suren said. “When people self-reflect, that’s special.”
Launching on Kickstarter has had its own perks, including reaching out to more audiences around the world. For the game, Singapore leads at 30.5%, with the US at 22.6%, Europe at 16.4%, Australia/New Zealand at 11.8%, the UK at 7.7%, and the rest of the world at 11%.
The Kickstarter campaign for Burnout will be live until May 19. The game is expected to ship following final artwork completion and manufacturing.
More games up next
Currently, conversations surrounding stocking Burnout at retail are underway in Thailand and France, with growing interest from Germany as well.
Besides Burnout, three titles by Laughing Sticks are already in development.
One card game, Triggered, currently in the playtest stage, is designed to replace stale icebreakers. Another, Burnout: Cubicle Wars, extends the same Burnout art style, theme, and workplace satire into a tile-laying mechanic. Meanwhile, Futsal Chess, also in playtest, is a 1v1 strategy game centred on outsmarting opponents to score goals.
The goal is a self-sustaining game company: three titles generating recurring revenue and no outside investment.
Once you have three games in the market, each getting two, three, five, 10 thousand a month—that adds up. The business becomes one that can sustain you for life.
Suren Rastogi
- Learn more about Burnout here.
- Read other articles we’ve written on Singaporean businesses here.