Mmm, games.

From 11AM to about 3AM today, I played games.

Got to do some playtesting with two pretty cool dudes for their separate games. One fellow, Mark, is ramping up his own game company here in Austin. He had perhaps four or five different prototypes in various stages of completion: A word game I didn't play, a trucking game I didn't play, a cooperative zombie-fighting card game which I did play (big surprise), and a very clever two-player game simulating spies in the Cold War which I also played. Overall, good stuff.

The other fellow, Dan, had a very promising game about monkeys escaping from a lab. I think we played perhaps six rounds of this game, tweaking the rules slightly each time- I had an absolute blast observing and participating in the evolution of a game. It really made me want to pick up my extant game ideas and develop them. Maybe I'll post a flyer for playtesters.

Also during the course of the day, I introduced a slew of people to Carabande, an awesome and out-of-print German racing game what won the Spiel des Jahres 1996. Also got to play Wiz-War (shades of high school), now sadly out of print. Write your Chessex representative.

Past midnight, after a long game of Wildlife, ran into a few guys with Steve Jackson Games, talked a little biz (freelancing) and got to play a prototype of a James Ernest game called Cowpoker.

Overall, a good and serendipitous time.