The Rainbow Awards
I’m excited to let you know that Uranus! was highly commended in the Rainbow Awards for Toy Excellence. The Rainbows are known for highlighting the best new toys and games in the run-up to Christmas.
Each toy entered in the Awards is tested by children along with their carers or parents, in different settings including schools and childcare as well as homes. All the toys entered are also tested and reviewed by blogger testers, with reviews appearing on their sites.
Each category has one winner and one highly commended and Uranus was the highly commended game in the Games & Puzzles Older Toys (11+ years) category.
Uranus! is a cooperative game for 1-6 players in which you are trying to defend the lesser known moons of Uranus from increasingly frequent and catastrophic asteroid attacks while developing technology that will help you escape before the moons explode.
This award comes hot on the heels of success in the Imagination Gaming Awards, the Independent Toy Awards and the Best Business Women Awards. Read more about those here.
Giochiamo in Famiglia
My book, The Board Game Family, has been translated into Italian. It’s very exciting, but despite my B in Italian GCSE, I’ve not made much headway!
This version, published by Erikson, is available from Amazon.it. Do tell all your Italian friends and family.
Of course, if you’d like to grab a copy of the English version, you can do so here.
PuzzleNation review the Coaster Games
A lovely new review of our Coaster Games has dropped in from PuzzleNation. Here’s an extract:
“Each game only lasts a matter of minutes (no more than 10 or 12 for the most involved ones), so new players are invited to sample all sorts of play styles, whereas people more familiar with each game monopolize their favorites for a few rounds before passing them along and picking up another one. This collection is a great way to keep a group occupied without making anyone wait too long for their turn, which can be a serious concern when you’re gaming with a big group or at a family gathering.
“All in all, I was pretty impressed with Coaster Games. The gameplay for each was easy to pick up with a single playthrough, and none of the games invited burnout even after multiple quick replays. If you need a great stocking stuffer or travel game, look no further.”
Wyrd Science
I was interviewed for the second edition of Wyrd Science, which has recently hit the shelves. The article in which I feature is called, “The Space Where We Belong”.
“Ellen Knight speaks to four extraordinary women, forging new and exciting paths in the world of tabletop gaming…to find out about their experience in this complex, ever-changing industry and their visions of its future.”
I’m in good company, the other three women interviewed for the article are Elizabeth Hargrave, designer of Wingspan and Mariposas, Raina Medina from 1MinuteBoardGames and Patricia Willenborg (a.k.a. Kismet Rose) from Kismet’s Dungeons and Dragons.
Wyrd Science is a new, quarterly, magazine for those exploring the strange worlds and new horizons of roleplaying games, wargames and board games.
“With a focus as much, if not more, on the culture, history and social issues of games as the mechanics of play, Wyrd Science provides a space for games designers, writers and artists to fully unpack their ideas, inspirations and influences and for our writers to dig into both the history of gaming and the issues of today. ”
Uranus!: A Spanish review
Uranus! has been reviewed by El Solitario: Juegos de Mesa en Solitario.
If you’re a Spanish speaker, please do take a look! If you’re not a Spanish speaker, it’s still worth a look, there are lots of great photos of the game and if you really want to know what it says, you can always run it through Google translate 🙂
Press coverage
Following the news that Doughnut Dash won the Best Imagination Gaming Game of the Year Award (a.k.a. The Biggy), I had some local press coverage, which was rather lovely.
I was interviewed by Roberto Perrone on BBC 3 Counties Radio and articles also made it into Living Magazine and Hemel Today.