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Fluxx
- Of everything I have created, Fluxx is without a doubt the
most successful. Over 44,000 copies of Fluxx have been sold thus
far, and among other distinctions, it's been given the coveted
Mensa
Select gaming award. It's showing every indication of becoming
not simply a hit, but a gaming classic. We hear stories over
and over again, of how people fell in love with this game and
played it all night long... but sometimes they're truly poignant.
I've been told that playing a few rounds of Fluxx has helped
some people get through difficult times, including the aftermath
of a guest of honor's death at a convention, and the struggle
to stay alive by someone in the hospital. It's an awesome thing
to know that you have created something that brings people together
and inspires joy and happiness. Wow. |
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The
Icehouse Set - In 1987, I wrote 5 paragraphs that
changed my life. In them, I described a really cool sounding
fictional game in tantalizingly incomplete detail. That description
started a 10 year struggle to manufacture a set of game pieces,
which has come to provide a gaming experience that is every bit
as rich and exciting as the ones I first dreamed of in the summer
of '87, back when I thought of myself not as a game designer,
but as a writer. John
Cooper took my incomplete notions of a real-time boardless Icehouse
game and created the eponymous
game which was the only one we had for many years (and for
which we were granted US Patent #4,936,585); but once we had
the next generation game pieces, which stacked, I invented a
turnless boardless game of my own, called IceTowers.
I've invented several other Icehouse games too, but besides IceTowers,
Martian Chess
is the only other one I've done that really seems to pass the
all-important "Let's Play Again" test. |
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Chrononauts
- Time travel has always been one of my favorite subjects. During
the spring of Y2K, I took everything I knew about Quantum Mechanics
and mixed it with everything I'd learned (mostly through trial
and error) about Game Design, and came up with an elegant, exciting,
and totally unique time travel card game. It's got fast, fun
gameplay, eye-catching art (with color by Alison),
a rich and involving backstory, and of course, the coolest of
all possible topics. It's already becoming another hit for us,
and it's won several major awards, including the Origins
Award for Best Traditional Card Game! |
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Aquarius
- The artwork for my second family card game is a tribute to
the visual stylings I grew up thinking were cool (which, oddly
enough, are currently back in style), and I think it represents
the zenith of my artistic achievements. I've always felt my artwork
is usually just passable, but people I don't know use words like
"awesome" to describe the Aquarius art! The gameplay
too is a proven winner, at least in many people's opinions...
as with Fluxx, there are those who find what is emerging as my
style of game design too chaotic and crazy for their tastes.
But hey, you can't please everyone. |
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Icebreaker
- I spent 2 years working in Georgetown for Magnet Interactive
Studios, which hired a huge staff of programmers and artists
to design and build video games, but then down-sized the division,
with many projects being shelved half-completed. Among the titles
that were actually released was this abstract arcade game of
pyramid vandalism, which
I created, designed, and wrote most of the software for. Unfortunately,
the original version died with the 3DO game system I developed
it on, and poor distribution and bad timing strangled the Mac/Windows
versions, when they hit the market some months later. But hey,
the 5 level demo
is still available for free, so go download it and see why Games
Magazine named Icebreaker the Best
New Action-Arcade Game on the Electronic Games 100 back in
1995. |
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HST Flight Software
- I spent 8 years as a government employee (GS-13), working at
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Among other things (including
working for Jim Chesney and meeting my lovely wife Kristin),
I wrote software that orbited the earth, on the Hubble Space
Telescope. It was installed during the 1993 servicing mission
that fixed the flaw in the lens (although my code was related
only to a new 386-based flight computer that was installed primarily
as a backup). My code flew in space until the Third Servicing
Mission, when the computer my stuff helped upgrade (the DF-224)
was completly replaced. |
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Bachelor of Science Degree
- It took me an extra year and my GPA was only 3.1, but I graduated
from the University of Maryland with a major in Computer Science,
back in 1986. (I also took a lot of Art and English classes,
fought in numerous medieval battle recreations, and co-wrote
several of the first few Live Action Role Playing games.) Before
that, I graduated from Northwestern High School, which like my
elementary school in University Park, has since been demolished
and replaced. |
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Eagle Scout - My
earliest major achievement was the attainment of the rank of
Eagle, in the Boy Scouts of America (Troops 728 and 214). I also
bicycled the full length of the C&O canal twice, made the
pilgrimage to backpack at Philmont twice, and was awarded Vigil
membership in the Order of the Arrow (where my Indian name is
Sakima Meteu). My Boy Scout involvement also included membership
in Explorer Post 1275, where I met John Cooper, had my first
regularly published Something (a cartoon in the monthly newsletter
called "2001 BC, A Spam
Oddesy"), and played my first text adventure game (the
original Colossal Cave of course), using NASA computers at GSFC. |
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Wunderland.Com
- For over 3 years now, I've been editing a free weekly webzine,
filled with fiction and essays, photographs, cartoons, and news
on local happenings. The site now boasts over 3000 pages of content,
contributed to by an online community of friends (the Wunderland
Toast Society). The online content I've provided includes
short stories (Nanofiction and
My Secret World),
a short novel (The Empty City),
radical opinion pieces (Stoners
in the Haze), a photographic portfolio (My
Image Wall), cartoons (Iceland
and Sketchbook Harvest),
a Virtual Brain, Thought
Residue, the Long Hair Index, and
plenty of other stuff. (I also tell Tirade
and Daddy-O what
sites and movies to review.) I update Wunderland once a week,
on Thursdays, so if you want to know what's going on in our lives
and with our business, you need to be reading the WWN. |
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Wunderland.Earth
- Our website is named for our house, which took Kristin's maiden
name (sort of) when she took mine. We're the kind of people who
followed through on those childhood daydreams of a home that's
more like a playhouse than an adult's house, so our pad is a
pretty neat place. (But please don't send in email asking if
you can visit... it gives us the willies.) |
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My Many Enduring Friendships
- My wife Kristin, my best
friend John,
my housemate Alison,
and my circle of close friends... these
have been key players in my numerous successes, and are among
my greatest joys in life. Churches and families must accept you
when no one else will, but friendships you must build for yourself,
and I especially value this last accomplishment since I don't
plan to breed. |
My Top Eleven Future Accomplishments
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- Winning Game of the Year: Aside from the obvious and
easily measured financial prosperity I hope and believe Looney
Labs will eventually attain, I think a good measure of my
success will come when a game I invent wins the Nobel Prize for
Game Design (or some such accolade) from some big distributor
of gaming awards. New games I'm working on towards this goal
include:
- Par-Tiki (a tiki-themed party game)
- Freezer (a new videogame using the Icebreaker engine)
- Secret Project 37-IGP (No, I'm still not saying what that
is)
- Icehouse 5th Edition
- Fluxx++
- Chrononauts: Into The Future!
- More Patents: I've already filed a patent application
for the method of play embodied in IceTowers,
and plan to get one in for the Chrononauts
TimeLine before Origins.
- Soon to be a Major Motion Picture: I plan to continue
writing stories, with both words and pictures, until something
I create is turned into a movie starring a big name actor as
a character I created. When I eventually tie up the stories unfolding
in Iceland, we plan
to publish the collected panels as a cartoon book, and I have
other works of fiction waiting to be written (or even just finished
up... my second novel, Playing Chess with God, is 90%
complete, but long forgotten on the back burner) including The
War on Dogs and a Nanofiction novel (a series of 100 or so
very short stories, which taken as a whole describe life on the
planet of walled cities).
- The Shrine of Long Hair Worship: A high-end coffee
table book filled with long hair photographs
(most of which I have yet to take).
- Around the World in 80 Days: I want to take such a
trip, not to prove it can be done of course, but simply to spend
that length of time touring the world (and joining the 7
Continents Club in the process).
- The Aurora Borealis: I want to see the northern lights
(a really good display, unlike the murky glow I glimpsed in 1985).
- The Wunderland Field Office: Once we become hugely
successful, we plan to establish a second residence, in a distant
city, thus enabling me to travel with just my wallet and keys
(and a purple bag
of games in case there's a disaster and I end up becoming
stranded on a desert island or some such).
- The Wunderland Coffeeshop: I'm hoping to have played
a part, however small, in the undoing of marijuana
prohibition, and plan to subsequently open a gaming parlor
and Amsterdam-style coffeeshop
in whatever groovy American city we choose for the Wunderland
Field Office (top 3 candidate cities at the moment: Asheville,
Pittsburgh, and Boulder).
- My Dream Car: I want to own a classically-styled open
roadster (a purple Paragon Panther with a hybrid electric engine,
a rumble seat, and several mysterious extra buttons on the instrument
panel). Alternatively, I'd like a New Beetle, ideally just like
the one Austin Powers was given: a convertible with a psychedelic
paint-job, capable of traveling through time. (Oh, and a garage
to keep it in please...)
- To Fly: I want to earn my hang-gliding
license (so I can fly, over the dunes and beyond) or better
yet, I'd like to get one of those auto-gyros, like that guy had
in the Road Warrior.
- A One-Way Trip into the Future: Walt Disney didn't
do it, but I'd really like to. I want to be cryonically frozen
when I'm 77, and revived in the distant future. I want to behold
for myself what future generations think of (and do to) my creations.
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Who is Andrew
Looney?
My
online brain is woefully out of date,
but you can still learn a lot about me by exploring it.
