How two Melbourne founders turned lockdown improvisation into a TikTok-fueled global phenomenon
When cities locked down in 2020 and 2021, many entrepreneurs battened down the hatches. Nat (Natalie) Delaney-John and Cam (Camille) Jasson did the opposite: they invented a way to make people louder. What started as two people in an apartment improvising noises to kill time became That Sound Game — a fast, noisy party game that launched publicly in February 2023 and quickly rode social platforms into international retail shelves.
There’s a tidy narrative that greets every breakout product: perfect timing, one viral clip, sheer luck. That shorthand obscures a more repeatable truth. The makers of That Sound Game combined five deliberate choices — a clear product constraint, disciplined play-testing, trend intelligence, distribution readiness and creator amplification — to turn a side project into a business that sold hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide. Any journalist or founder interested in the mechanics of virality should stop romanticizing “luck” and study the mechanics instead.
Find a real gap — and make a rule that forces creativity
Most party games are variations on the same loop: act, draw, or taboo the answer. Nat and Cam asked a simple question: why not sound? By imposing a hard rule — no hand gestures and only vocalizations plus body movement — they created a constraint that generates unexpected, repeatable moments. Constraints like this do the heavy lifting marketing tools can’t: they create behavior that’s inherently sharable.
Iterate with humans, not dashboards
They didn’t rush to Kickstarter. Months of private playtesting, followed by dozens of public playthroughs at conventions such as PAX, let them observe where players laughed, stalled or replayed a round. That feedback — the human kind — told them what worked far more reliably than surveys or social media likes. Real play yields real product-market fit; everything else is amplification.
Use trend intelligence to pick your vehicle
Designing a game is craft; choosing how to show it is product strategy. Jasson’s interest in trend-tracking tools helped them identify where “soundable” moments already lived: short vertical videos. They invested in a TikTok launch creative that showcased raw, repeatable laughter — and creators amplified it. In short: the medium had to match the moment.
Prepare operations before you go viral
Viral attention without logistics equals frustration. The team distributed inventory globally (U.S., U.K., China, Australia) ahead of time so demand spikes didn’t translate into empty carts and bad reviews. That readiness turned transient demand into sustainable sales. Retail placements followed — from major online marketplaces to big-box shelves — giving shoppers low-friction purchase options.
Turn joy into a career — and keep the product human
The result: more than a few hundred thousand copies sold, translations into multiple languages, award recognition and the ability for the founders to make game design their full-time work. But the most durable lesson is cultural, not commercial: products that produce genuine, unfiltered laughter translate into cultural currency. The algorithm notices; people notice more.
A quick playbook for founders
- Define one constraint that makes your product behave differently.
- Test face-to-face until the “repeat play” signal appears.
- Use trend data to choose one launch channel and optimize a single, short creative.
- Harden logistics before amplification.
- Let creators tailor the moment — don’t try to script every video.
If you want a headline metric: the founders launched in early 2023, and within a few years their product became a viral sensation on TikTok and an international retail SKU — a path that’s less mystical than it looks and more procedural than most case studies admit.
