How does one explain the “Williams Swivel,” Snar, and Mountain Day to friends and family outside of the Purple Bubble?  Unique references like these prompted Sarah Ling ’24 and Kazi Raleh ’24 to create The Life of an Eph — a card game released in November 2024 that seeks to capture the nostalgia and memories of Ephs past and present.

With 25 purple question cards and 125 yellow answer cards, this Williams-themed version of Apples to Apples allows students to make up combinations with prompt cards like “I know we don’t have frats or business majors, but ____ is worse,” and answers like “an embarrassingly awkward entry snacks.”

Ling and Raleh met during their first year at the College as “podmates.” Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, students could only interact without masks within groups of six students. “I think Kazi was the first person I had a real conversation with,” Ling said in an interview with the Record. 

Two years later, Ling was at a Christmas party and she began discussing the quirks that characterize student life at the College. While playing a themed game of Apples to Apples, Ling came up with an idea: She could make her own game about those Williams quirks. She began asking the partygoers for their input. “I would just ask people ‘Hey, if you had this game that was Williams-themed, what card would you put in?’” she said.

After the party, however, Ling abandoned the idea. She was a busy student and didn’t have time to work on the game. But, amid the nostalgia of senior year, Raleh decided to revisit the idea. “Everybody starts thinking about how we’re gonna leave Williams,” he said. “We started thinking about all the cool experiences and memories that we do.”

He asked Ling to restart the project during the summer after they graduated. “When we graduated, Kazi was like, ‘Hey, we should actually do this. Now’s the time,’” Ling said.

Ling and Raleh started brainstorming ideas and contacted alums for stories. “We reached out to a lot of people that we knew,” Raleh said. “We were talking to them about their experiences, and soon we realized that there were a lot of very distinct, memorable, funny Williams experiences that we could put together into a game.”

Ling and Raleh used these ideas — along with their own — to create the cards. After coming up with the phrases on the cards, Ling began designing the game itself. “Sarah did an amazing job at designing, drawing, putting the cards together, … and [creating] the box,” Raleh said. While Ling designed the game, Raleh handled the financial and marketing logistics.

In early October, Ling and Raleh ordered 75 copies of the game, selling out most of their first batch through pre-orders and by tabling at Homecoming. 

After selling the first batch, Ling and Raleh contemplated whether or not to continue the game’s production. “We have been in touch with a lot of the stores on Spring Street, like, Where’d You Get That!? and the Williams Shop,” Raleh said. “A lot of them showed interest, but we’ve been trying to figure out what that looks like.”

Both Ling and Raleh said that they didn’t create the game as a means of generating profit. “I think both of us knew from the beginning that we weren’t really going to make much money off of this,” Ling said. “It was more just about getting even [financially] and giving people the opportunity to play this game.” 

“Considering the size and scale of Williams, it was never going to sell thousands of copies,” Raleh added. “There just aren’t — relatively speaking — that many Williams people who might be interested in playing a game.”

Raleh and Ling tried to find timeless themes to include in the game. “One of the challenges was that a lot of the cards that we made were, generally speaking, representative of our time,” Raleh said.

Many of the initial purchasers were alums, Raleh explained. “A bunch of [alums] reached out via email, Instagram, and some of them were really enthused to hear about a lot of different experiences than they had,” Raleh said.

“But we also tried to be like, ‘Okay, what would be experiences that past generations would experience?’”

“Alums think of Williams [in a] very nostalgic, fond way, especially [the] longer [they’ve] been away from Williams,” he added. “We were hoping playing our game would give them an opportunity to evoke some of those memories.” 

Even for current students at the College, the game provides a way to connect with the community. “Playing the game at the end of the fall semester felt like an amusing walk down memory lane,” Atticus Ross ’27 wrote to the Record. “It was like being a part of an inside joke with the entire school. If there is the usual slow Friday night on Hoxsey, I know where to turn for some laughs and a little entertainment.”

For now, Ling and Raleh are unsure about what they envision for the future of The Life of an Eph. “Maybe we’ll make a batch before the next Homecoming and that’s going to be our thing,” Raleh said.