Clinton family creates pro-life board game

By Tanya Connor
The Catholic Free Press

Make a game of it.
The Napoli family from Clinton did just that on a road trip seven years ago.  
Last weekend, they displayed the results – their pro-life themed game called “Monkey Life” – at the Bolton Fair in Lancaster.

They’d sold some of their first 500 copies, printed last November, at the Worcester Diocesan Catholic Men’s Conference in March, according to the husband and father, Filippo Napoli.    
People can also buy the game on their website, monkeylifegame.com, and etsy.com. Mr. Napoli said he’s awaiting acknowledgment from amazon.com that the game, for two to six players ages 7 and up, passed safety standards for children, so he can sell it there. Last Saturday, he sold one of the $50 games at the fair.

“On Sunday, a lot of people approached me,” he said. To honor the Sabbath, he wasn’t selling that day. Instead, he offered a coupon for 50% off the $10 shipping price, for fair-goers who order the game on his website.  

Religious sisters from the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Still River joined them at the booth Sunday. The Napolis worship at the Slaves’ chapel and the children attend their school, from which the older ones graduated. Mr. Napoli said that on Sunday the sisters offered religious materials and played the game with his youngest children, Carlo, 12, and Mariapia, 8.  

“I think that was very unique, that the whole family worked together” for years to create the game, said Sister Magdalene Marie Fill, who enjoyed playing it with the children at the fair. After learning from their father what went into creating it, “You can’t look at a board game the same way anymore,” she said.

“The world of Monkey Life was born during a family car ride from USA to Canada,” says monkeylifegame.com.

Mr. Napoli said that, to engage his family on that several-hour trip, he asked, “How about we invent a game?” The children wanted to feature monkeys.  

“All of us pitched in with ideas,” recalled Carlo.

Carlo said he and his sister Sara, now 16, talked about having players match colors and numbers, like in the game UNO. He wanted to make the game magnetic; “I just liked how magnets worked.” Monkey Life was fun to work on and “it was pretty enjoyable with the magnets,” he said. Now he’s thinking of another game to invent.

But that’s “getting ahead of the game.”

This game took much work, editing and tens of thousands of dollars to produce, according to Mr. Napoli, a native of Italy, who worked on the translation of the English rules into Italian. His wife, Martha, who was born in Switzerland and lived in Italy and Spain, did a Spanish translation.

“I wanted to show the kids how an idea can become a reality,” Mr. Napoli said. Through his consulting firm Piosoft (named for Padre Pio and software), the game was produced, funded and insured, he said.

After his family made sketches on a white board, he hired graphic designers: Russians did initial designing, a Swiss person made pawns and Americans arranged pictures on the cards and box.

Mr. Napoli needed the skills of different designers because of the custom design: the cards are round, the pawns monkey shaped. Printing pictures on transparent plastic cards required an extra layer. Unsuccessful in finding a printer in the United States, he worked with a manufacturer in China.

The game is intentionally pro-life; “that’s why we call it Monkey Life,” Mr. Napoli said. They created a monkey family and prioritized the baby and grandparents.  

The baby has a branch for a crib, and a pink bow, since the baby in their family was a girl - Mariapia. Baby monkey cards have MP on them to represent her. Now old enough to play, she calls Monkey Life “a very fun game” she likes to play in teams, which is one option.
“It’s your game, Mariapia,” her siblings had declared.

“No, it’s all of us,” countered their father. “Why don’t you pick a card?” So, each chose a different set of cards with a number, and that number of monkeys doing different things. The children’s first initials were added to those cards. In addition to Mariapia, Carlo, and Sara, the family includes Adam, now 18, and Dylan, now 22.

On the mother monkey cards is an M for Martha, on the father cards an F for Filippo. To avoid taking sides with the grandparents, there are no letters on cards with the grandmother monkey knitting vines and the grandfather reading a book called “History of Bananas.”

“We just did it subtle,” Mr. Napoli said of the tiny initials. “We didn’t want people to think” there was a meaning behind the letters for players.  

However, “the cross on the [crib-branch] is very visible, and that’s intentional,” he said, and expressed hope that people think about the cross’ meaning. He said he grew up with the tradition of posting a cross or angel on cribs “for protection and blessings.” The vines on the back of the cards circle into a cross, “so everything is centered around the cross.”  

The monkey cards are numbered from zero to 12, with zero showing the father and mother monkeys when they were dating, their tails forming a heart.

“We put as the highest [numbered] card ... the baby monkey ... just to show you the value of the babies,” Mr. Napoli said. “To me it’s pro-life. ... Life is important; it starts with the baby. [The game] is kind of centered around the baby ... the only card that, in itself, is worth one point.”  

Society’s views today are “upside down,” he said. “Babies are just an option.” People in their 20s, 30s and 40s are seen as “most valuable to the society. Then they try to put us in a nursing home. They don’t even hire people that are older,” at least not as CEOs.  

Monkey Life tries to communicate the “value [older people] bring to life ... their work, wisdom.” After the baby, the cards with the highest value are the grandfather, grandmother, father and mother.

The game is also pro-life in that “we don’t have violence,” Mr. Napoli said. Cards with fractions, to help children learn math, depict predators – tigers, anacondas, crocodiles and bats – who seek to capture monkeys, not kill them. Predator and action cards can “capture” opponents’ monkey cards in various ways.  

To eliminate the need for pen and paper to keep score, the scoreboard – a tree up which players move their monkey pawns – is printed on the playing mat. The object is to get the most points, advance to the throne at the tree’s top, and be crowned king of the jungle.

Among Mr. Napoli’s goals are selling the first 500 copies of the game, and eventually having it pay for itself and help pay his children’s college tuition.