Happy New Year!

The holidays are always a busy time. Somehow, between all the travel and turkey dinners, I've been able to take on a new Toy Fair kids game contract, assist publishers with some of my upcoming titles slated for later this year, make a final push on some top secret titles I have some interesting self-publishing plans for, and enter a new, busier phase in my day job at BioWare. More on all of that later. For now, I just wanted to point you to some of the exciting new developments that are still ongoing with Two by Two.

A sneak peek from the Canadian Heritage Collection newsletter...

New CanadiaN GAMES REVIEWED!

With the holiday sales season upon us, most of the new Canadian game releases of 2010 are now available from distributors and making their way into the hands of eager customers. With that in mind, I thought I'd share some of the customer reviews and commentary coming from BoardGameGeek, a popular gaming site among game enthusiasts. While commentary on the site doesn't always reflect the opinions of the broader market, it nevertheless offers some interesting insights into how you might want to present a given game to your customers. Read on to hear what people the world over are saying about some of the latest board and card games designed and published right here in Canada...

Best New Family Game of 2010?

It's always exciting (and a little nerve-wracking) to see your creations finally out there in the wild. So far, however, I'm grateful to see that Two By Two is being well-received.

With its current average rating of 7.03 out of 10, Two by Two is the 6th highest rated game on a religious theme over at BoardGameGeek, nestled right in there between the religious editions of Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan. That's fairly good company to be keeping, as those are both considered to be fairly highly regarded versions of the original classics (which are themselves rated 7.47 and 7.57 respectively).*

Codename Punk and How to Kickstart a Baby

It's Essen season in the board game industry and all eyes are turned to Germany. The big scandal this year is that one of the major European component suppliers has fallen behind on their orders and, as a result, a lot of highly anticipated games are delayed and won't be available at the industry's biggest trade show. This is devastating for some small publishers for whom that may be their only title this year. Fortunately, Valley Games is unaffected. They've run afoul of late deliveries in previous years so this time around they made sure to fly everything out to Germany a month in advance and warehouse it there so it would be ready and waiting for them when they arrived yesterday. Here's wishing them luck and some great international exposure for Two by Two.