FEBRUARY 2026
Can games be art? At Terror Toad, we think so. We see tabletop games and party games as participatory art; playful, collaborative, and alive the moment someone opens the box.
With backgrounds in community art and performing, we’ve always been drawn to what happens when people step into a game together as participants. Whether it’s a fun card game for friends, an indie tabletop game, or an RPG, our games are designed to spark laughter, creativity, and a little bit of chaos.
In this post, we explore why games can be participatory art, and why that matters for anyone looking to buy tabletop games that bring people together.
🎭 What Is Participatory Art in Tabletop Games?
Participatory art is any creative work that requires active input from the audience. It breaks the wall between creator and viewer. In tabletop games, the same principle applies: a game doesn’t truly exist until players bring it to life.
From collaborative party games to immersive indie RPGs, games ask more than just strategy or skill. They require presence, imagination, and interaction with others. Each session is a mini social contract - shaped entirely by the players, just like a community art project.
🎲 Games Are Systems That Need People
You can hold a game in your hands, admire the art, or read the rules, but it only truly comes alive when it’s played. That’s what makes party games and tabletop games participatory. Players create the experience together, improvising, negotiating, and sometimes even performing.
Every game is an opportunity for interactive play, whether it’s a light-hearted card game for a group of friends or a theatrical, story-driven indie game. That’s what makes Terror Toad games different: we design with players in mind, not just rules on a page.
🐸 What We Learn from Community Art
Katie’s work as a community arts facilitator often centres on questions like:
Who gets to participate?
How do we create safe, playful spaces?
What happens when we let go of control?
These are the same questions we ask when designing tabletop games, party games, and indie RPGs. Many of our game ideas come directly from community art values:
Accessibility over polish
Process over outcome
Weirdness over rules
Joy over perfection
Games, like community art, are a way to hold space for collective experience. They encourage collaboration, laughter, and storytelling that can last long after the game ends.
🌀 Not Just Play, but Performance
Chris’s background in acting adds another layer: performance. When you play a game, especially theatrical or improvisational games, you step into a role. You co-create a moment.
Many of our indie tabletop games and party games lean into this: they’re messy, silly, and a little surreal. Each session can be a tiny piece of ephemeral art - gone when it’s over, but meaningful or funny while it lasts.
🧪 Why It Matters
Treating games as participatory art opens space for:
Playful risk-taking
More diverse voices at the table
Creativity that doesn’t need to be “perfect” to be valuable
New relationships, insights, and shared stories
In a world full of polished products and passive consumption, inviting people to co-create experiences (even ridiculous ones!) feels important. And yes, it’s fun. That matters.
🐊 Final Thoughts: Play as Creative Practice
You don’t have to be an artist to play. But playing can be a kind of artistry itself.
Our hope is that Terror Toad games live at that intersection: between art and play, structure and chaos, designer and participant. We’re still exploring what that means - and that’s part of the art, too.
Whether you’re shopping for fun card games, party games for adults, or immersive indie tabletop games, we hope our designs inspire creativity, laughter, and shared stories.
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