Looney Labs

Looney Labs is a small game company based in College Park, Maryland, USA. It is named after its founders, Andrew Looney and Kristin Looney.

Card Games

The company is probably best known for its card games, especially "Fluxx", whose rules and goals change as the result of its players' actions, and "Chrononauts", themed around time travel. Both of these were designed by Andrew Looney and derive much of their popularity from the whimsical, unpredictable nature that he tends to give his games; while a player can definitely benefit from an overall strategy, the games are random enough to demand far more short-term tactical skill than long-term planning ability.

Looney Labs publishes a number of less popular card and board games (see Andrew Looney for a more complete list), but one of particular note is "Are You a Werewolf?", Andrew Plotkin's thematic variant of Mafia. The game, which requires a relatively large number of people to play, is especially popular at game conventions such as Origins, where it frequently draws in players (and sometimes entire families) from other areas of the convention.

Icehouse Pyramids

Looney Labs also produces and sells "Icehouse" pieces, small, colorful plastic pyramids useful for playing a variety of games (as well as inventing new ones). In one sense they are the Labs' flagship product, being the original motivation for the company's launch (as "Icehouse Games, Inc.") in the 1980s, but they have yet to bring the company anything approaching the financial success of its card games. Rules for various "Icehouse" games are available on the web, as well as in the book "Playing with Pyramids", which the Looneys publish.

Since 1999, Looney Labs has sold the pyramids in a variety of formats, but the game remains a cult phenomenon at best; the Looneys have yet to find a profitable packaging and marketing formula that appeals to a broad base of gamers. After unsuccessfully trying to sell four-color, 60-piece boxes, the company switched to a strategy of selling the pyramids in single-color, 15-piece tubes. In 2006 the company began phasing these out in favor of five-color, 15-piece tubes marketed as "Treehouse", a stand-alone game.

Looney Labs hopes that this strategy of primarily selling a single game rather than an entire abstract game system will lead to more interest in "Icehouse". The company has taken this strategy before with popular "Icehouse" games such as "Ice Towers" and " Zendo", which were briefly available as standalone games sold in colorful retail packaging resembling that of more traditional board games. These did not last long in print, however, due to disappointing sales (despite "Zendo" winning the Origins Award for best abstract board game in 2003). The company is now betting that "Treehouse"'s minimalist form and lower price tag will win the broad appeal that these games failed to capture.

Activism

Andy sometimes makes his opposition to American marijuana prohibition apparent in the games that he designs, slipping in various references to marijuana and its attendant culture. These include the players' ability to legalize marijuana through timeline manipulation in "Chrononauts", or the clock reading that can be seen on one "Fluxx" card. More recently, the company has published "Stoner Fluxx", a variant of the popular game that is an overt celebration of pot and the fight to legalize its consumption in the USA.

External links

* [http://looneylabs.com Looney Labs' homepage]
* [http://icehousegames.com "Icehouse" games homepage]
* [http://wunderland.com Wunderland.com] , a weekly newsletter by Andrew Looney, as well as a large collection of creative webpages by the Looneys and their friends
* [http://www.icehousegames.org/ "Icehouse" Games fan site] , including a wiki with games and pointers to games.
* [http://www.krisjohn.net/labs.html Looney Labs Fans network index page] , with links to groups on many popular social networking and community sites.
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