The Looney Labs Electronic Arcade

Computerized versions of the games published by Looney Labs - Updated Dec 3, 2006

Releases and Links
Official Policy on Electronic Versions of Looney Labs Games
Join the Arcade Mailing List (or announcement list)

The following games have been officially released:

• Javaquarius: A Java-based implementation of Aquarius, playable at our site!
• You can play several of our games at Volity.net:
• Fluxx
• Aquarius
• Treehouse
• Are you a Werewolf?
• And several pyramid games are available at SuperDuperGames.com:
  • Blam
  • Branches, Twigs, and Thorns
  • Homeworlds (Binary and Sinister)
  • Martian Chess
  • Pikemen
  • Sprawl
• MicroFluxx: A petite implementation of Fluxx for the Palm (alternate web site)
• Fluxx at CCG: Play Fluxx online [beta]
• Icebreaker: The 5-level demo versions of the long-lost Andrew Looney video game can still be downloaded for Mac or PC
• Martian Vapor Chess Applet: A Java-based version of Martian Chess, available at Supermaze.com
• zProton: A new release of Proton, downloadable from Zillions-of-Games.com

Official Policy on Electronic Versions of Looney Labs Games

February 2, 2006

Premise

As a game company, our mission is to create and promote games played using physical components that we sell. It is our belief that while computer gaming is fun, there is no substitute for gathering around a table with your friends and dealing out a stack of playing cards. Computer games, at least fancy commercial computer games that people pay money for, are a much bigger beast to develop than card games and board games. We know that we do not want to make computer games.

However, there is obviously a market for electronically playable adaptations of our physical games. And although we have been approached with ideas for such many times over the years — by everyone from fans who just want to program something up in their basement to significant players in the electronic game business — we have remained unsure of how best to allow others to exploit the demand on our behalf.

We have decided to fully encourage fan-built computerizations of our games, and to think of any money we might have made from an electronic version to simply be part of our advertising budget to promote the physical version of the game. There is no shortage of energetic programmers who love our games and would enjoy making computerizations of them, as a hobby. We hope to increase demand for our products by making computerized versions of our games as freely available as possible.

Policy

Our official policy (subject to change) is to grant permission to release a computer game based on one of our original game designs if the following criteria are met:

1. So far we have maintained a policy that all versions must be freeware (i.e., the software cannot be sold and must be freely playable by anyone who wants it at no charge). If you really, really want to charge for your version, you'll have to provide us with a contract to our liking — among having to jump through other hoops — and only then we might agree to letting you charge for folks to play.
2. The programmer(s) must take full responsibility for customer support, problems people have with the electronic version, etc.
3. The adaptation must be faithful to the original. The programmer(s) must show us the work before it is released, and if we aren't happy with it, we may retract our permission.
4. The game should act as an advertisement to intrigue players about Looney Labs, our games, our web site, etc.
   All documentation relating to the game must:
• give us appropriate design credit
• list our URL, http://looneylabs.com/ — or — a direct link to the purchasable equivalent in our web store (if one exists)
• encourage sales of the tabletop edition of the game
5. The name of the computer release must fully include the name of the physical game. You can also modify said name in some way so as to indicate that this is an adaptation of the original (for example, Javaquarius, MicroFluxx, zProton, etc).
6. We must be allowed to offer the electronic version of the game on our web site, as a module for download if not playable directly on our server.

This permission is not unlimited; we may at some point in the future wish to change these policies. We reserve the right to change our minds.

We offer no remuneration of any kind to those who volunteer to build software like this for us. (This may change in the future, but no promises on when, how, or if.)

Looney Labs Arcade Mailing List (and announcement list)

If you are interested in becoming a volunteer programmer for the Looney Labs Arcade, please sign up for the Arcade mailing list. This list will eventually be the place to find beta testers and to participate in discussions of the projects currently underway - over the next few weeks it will be the place to hammer out the specifics of exactly how the policy should be worded and how the 'asking for permission' thing is going to work. (Please don't start working on anything until you have cleared it with us, as there may already be someone working on the project you are considering.) If you just want to be informed when a new game appears here in the arcade, sign up for the Arcade-Announce mailing list.

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Last Modified: Jul 04 2009 at 15:22