We're back from another grand success at the Origins Game Fair in Columbus Ohio where we held our 12th Big Experiment! To begin with, here are some views of the Lab, where we ran all of our tournaments and most of our other special events.
The image below shows the front of the Lab, with the interspersed daisy stickers on the floor heading off in the direction of the Exhibit Hall. If you followed this "Daisy Path" it would take you all the way to our booth.
The tables at the front of the Lab were open for new players to demo games. The space further back in the Lab was reserved for our official Tournaments.
The longest-running of our tournaments is the International Icehouse Tournament, of which this was the 22nd annual event. Here's the scene between matches, with official referee Eric Zuckerman painstakingly computing the final scores while the players psyche themselves up for the next match. (BTW I was the purple player in the completed game seen at the far left.)
Next are a couple of panos from one of the Andy vs. Everybody sessions I did. Robin took this view from outside the circle of games...
...and Mort Myers took this Pano of the view he had of me as I worked my way around the circle and back to the game he and I were playing:
Here are a couple of views of the Looney Labs booth in the Exhibit Hall. As you can see, we are mostly focusing on our 3 newest releases: Back to the Future, Pirate Fluxx, and of course, Seven Dragons, which we were debuting at the show.
We had two demo-game tables in our booth, and never had trouble finding new players eager to sit down and try out our newest games.
The nightly tradition of hunting werewolves that used to fill up the hallway outside the Lab at night has become a standalone event with their own huge & awesome gaming space. Here's a look at the late-night werewolf hunting scene:
I only played a couple of games of Are You a Werewolf? myself, but I had a rockin' great time doing so. Here's what one of those games looked like from my point of view, when our village was still full:
Back in the Lab, we ran big events like the official Fluxx World Championships...
...and silly events like the "who has the longest hair?" contest we call the Aquarius Hairdown...
...and other fun events like a "Parsely" game I wrote called Muffins.
We paused for a group portrait of the many volunteers who make this whole event possible. Here's an enormous thank you to everyone seen here and everyone else who helped but didn't get into this photo! 
Lastly, since we've decided to cancel the Big Experiment next year and don't know what our plans will turn into for future years, we decided to give our awesome team of helpers an extra treat this year: cupcakes! Here's the spread we secretly assembled in the back room just before we started telling folks in lab coats to go back there and help themselves...
For additional reporting on Big Experiment #12, please check out my WWN report. |
