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COLLEGE PARK, MD, March 25 -- This week, American Mensa selected Fluxx, the card game with ever-changing rules, as one of the five best new games of 1999.
Each year, members of the high-IQ society gather for a weekend of marathon game playing to judge which of the year's new card and board games are the best. This year's event, the 10th Annual Mind Games competition, was held over the weekend in Seattle and included more than 80 Mensa members who divided into groups to play and evaluate the 38 games entered. The games were judged on originality, game play, aesthetics, play value, and clarity of instructions. The competition was not open to game prototypes or to video, computer or war games.
Fluxx, a card game in which the rules for how you play change from one turn to the next, was among the 5 games chosen in this year's competition. The game was first released in '97 in a modest, black and white edition, and became an instant underground hit; last year it was republished by Iron Crown Enterprises, under an exclusive licensing deal with Looney Laboratories, the design studio that created it. Demand for the revamped color edition has been fabulous, and the game is now in its third printing.
"We believe these games are the cream-of-the-crop and -- like many of the past winners -- may become some of the best-selling games of the year," said Steve Weinreich, national chief judge. Previous winners have included Taboo, Scattergories, Trivial Pursuit, Set, Magic the Gathering, and Terrace.
This years winners of the Mensa Mind Games competition also included Apples and Oranges (published by Out of the Box Games), Bollox (Cadaco), Doubles Wild (Enginuity LLC), and Quiddler (Set Enterprises).
Looney Labs, a tiny husband & wife run business in College Park Maryland, is an internet-based new product development studio which designs games and other gift products. In addition to Fluxx, they also publish Aquarius (the groovy card game that plays kind of like dominos, only better) and Proton (the self-contained, retro-futuristic, abstract strategy pocket board game for 1 or 2 players). Looney Labs also publishes a wacky weekly webzine (www.wunderland.com) with over two thousand pages of games, stories, poems, photos, and essays, and runs a secure e-commerce gift shop that sells their games, along with many other smaller run experimental gift products.
For more information about Looney Labs or Fluxx, contact Kristin Looney via Voice: (301) 441-1019, Fax: (301) 441-4871, email: kristin@wunderland.com, Web: www.looneylabs.com, or Mail: PO Box 761, College Park, MD 20740 USA.
For more information about Mensa or the Mind Games competition, contact Mark Witter via Voice: (817) 607-0060, Fax: (817) 649-5232, email: aml@onramp.net, or Web: www.us.mensa.org.
