Play more, consume less.

Play With Your Own Junk is a carefully curated set of modern parlor games, designed to give you an easy place to find earth-friendly, affordable, and approachable ways to play with your friends and family.

All the games featured on this site can be played with common household items, sometimes with the help of digital tools. You can start playing these games right now, without buying anything or spending a bunch of time prepping to play. 

Each game has been carefully selected to fit the goals of the website, and has a self-contained set of items to play with and instructions to follow — think of it sort of like a recipe website, but for games!

Why do this?

Carol Mertz

Hi, I’m Carol — I make the Play With Your Own Junk project. I’ve been a professional game designer for many years, with several of those years as a senior game designer for Exploding Kittens, a mass market tabletop game publisher.

In my time making games, I regularly find myself wishing games as a whole were more accessible, affordable, approachable, and sustainable. So here we are!

Parlor games like these were super common to play in past generations, but many of us have now come to rely on pre-printed and mass-distributed board games that come with a hefty price tag and a high carbon footprint. Through Play With Your Own Junk, I want to help lower the barrier for entry and reduce the environmental impact of modern party games.

If you like what I’m doing and would like to donate to help support this and other projects, you can tip me on Ko-Fi, or pay what you want for any of my games on itch.io.

Can I submit a game?

If you’d like to submit a free game to be featured on Play With Your Own Junk, please do! We’re always looking for more great games to feature. The requirements are:

  • no use of generative AI — this stuff’s by and for humans only, baby.
  • only use common household objects that most everyday folks own — we don’t expect anyone to have materials like playing cards or dice, but we do offer links to tools like digital dice if your game needs a randomizer or timer.
  • don’t require printing on paper (but writing on paper is okay!)
  • totally free to play, and do not require purchasing additional materials or software to play
  • simple, easy-to-learn rules

If your game matches those criteria, feel free to send it to us through our contact and game submission form. I can’t guarantee I’ll respond to every submission, but if your project is accepted I’ll let you know before it goes live on the site.

Thank you

This project wouldn’t exist without the help and feedback from a lot of friends. I’m so grateful for all the support I’ve gotten while I put this together, and I really appreciate you for being here! Thank you! <3