[Looney
Labs] [Shopping
Center]
 
News Archives
-
- [Guide] [Games] [E-Books]
[WTS]
The Illusionist :)
The story behind
the magical invention
of the Holodeck.
How
to build a Rubik's Cube Costume
"Treehouse is one of the best games I have played. Why
is that? It's fast, easy, and small. Whenever I go to a family
function, you can guarentee that Treehouse is in my pocket. My
son and I will play it while sitting around a table with other
family members. Since the game is so simple, you can carry on
a conversation with others while playing the game. It sure makes
those functions go by faster." -- Troy Davidson's
comment on a BGG thread called "The
ever changing Treehouse of Icehouse"
   
|
|
|
 |
Martian Coasters are at the
Printers! |
|
|
|
 A month
ago, I announced that I'd come up with another new game,
called Martian Coasters, and that we'd decided to put it on the
fast track to production. I'm pleased to report that the art
for the coasters has been sent to the printers, and we're on
schedule to have the game available for sale in November!
Shown here is what will appear on the backside of one of the
four coasters in the set. (Surf back to last
month's article for a glimpse of what the colorful fronts
of the coasters will look like, and for more info on how the
game itself is played.)
The other 3 coasters will have different designs on the back.
One will feature an overview of the rules for Martian Coasters,
the next a guide to Icehouse Terminology, and the last will feature
this same view of Mars, except during the day.
To help promote the launch of this cool new product (and to
help convey the fact that it's an expansion set for Treehouse
and you need a Treehouse set to play), Kristin has come up with
a marketing gimmick she's calling "The Crazy-Good Martian
Coasters Special."
The retail price for Martian Coasters will be $6. Please ask
your Friendly Local Game Store to pre-order it now, and be sure
to tell them about the Crazy-Good
Martian Coasters Special!
|
|
 Another thing
that happened a few weeks ago was that Susan Goldstine came to
town, to work on a big mobile-making project. Alison has been
into making mobiles for a while now, having gotten the bug (and
know-how) from Russell,
and she in turn has been getting others interested in the craft.
Now, Susan is pretty crafty too, and she's a math professor,
so she really loved the idea of the Fibonacci-inspired mobile
that Alison gave Kristin's Dad (who's also a mathematician) for
Xmas a year or two ago. She liked the idea so much, Susan decided
to make a Fibonacci mobile to hang in the hallway of the Math
Department at the college where she works.
Here you see Susan and Alison with the almost-finished parts
of the Fibonacci
Mobile... for more details, photos, and diagrams, go see
the page Susan posted about it!
|
 Thanks
for reading, and have a great week! |
|
 |
 |
We've just learned that, since we make all our games in the
USA, Looney Labs qualifies
for a special tax break for companies that do their production
domestically! And it's getting better! The deduction doubles
in 2007, and goes to 9% after that, so the tax savings could
be substantial! [Our pyramids are manufactured right here in
Maryland, as are many of our smaller printing tasks, and our
card games are printed in Tennessee, which is also where the
coaster company (now making Martian
Coasters for us) is located.] |
 |
It dawned on me last night, while watching the Lost season
3 opener, that the main character has the same name as a now-obscure
historical personality: Jack Sheppard. (The original Jack
Sheppard was a thief who became famous for breaking out of
prisons over and over again, early in the 18th century.) It's
probably just a coincidence, but on this show, you never know.
Various Lost-watchers have noted that the character name Henry
Gale is undoubtedly a Wizard of Oz reference, so perhaps other
names are clues as well. So maybe this Jack Sheppard is destined
to break out of the prison that is the island they're all trapped
on. |
 |
I first learned about the exploits of Jack Sheppard from
my brother Jeff, who had this idea for a story called "Harry
and Jack Escape From Hell." The idea was that Jack Sheppard
meets up in the afterlife with Harry Houdini, the other greatest
escape artist of all time, and together they find a way to break
out of the underworld. Who else but those two working together
could escape from the ultimate prison? I liked this idea so much
that in 1985, I worked it into one of my earliest game
design efforts, a LARP
called Reklone 3: The
Road to the Future. In that game, Harry & Jack had just
escaped from Hell when they found themselves being automatically
summoned to the Crystal
Palace (along with everyone else outside of the normal time-stream)
for an Emergency Meeting of the Union of Time Travelers. Since
I wrote the part with him in mind, Jeff agreed to play Jack Sheppard,
and he got a friend of his (named Ted) to play Houdini. Harry
& Jack went on to play vital roles in preventing the destruction
of the entire universe, due to an expanding
hole in the Time-Space Continuum. (I reused a number of ideas
from Reklone-3 in the design of Chrononauts,
but neither Harry nor Jack have made an appearance in any of
my modern games... yet.) |
|
|
|
|