Another year, Another IGD@YL 

All over the country, libraries host a free, game day where children and adults gather around to make crafts and to learn/play the hottest, newest, and even classic board games from the Library’s collection. We love this event because it’s free, it’s in our home town, we’ve loved working with the Chicago Public Libraries by donating copies of RobotLab.  So far it’s been such a rewarding event where our mission comes to life- making fun games for every curious, game loving, player.

This year, we met a few of backers on Kickstarter who were so excited to see alpha copies of our newest game, Inoka, in person. They all wondered at the beauty of the artwork but after setting up the game to play, some were shocked that Inoka can be played with multi-players. My favorite moment was the jaw dropping reaction when I revealed that we created a  5-8 player ruleset. This group was having a hard time remembering the Inoka clashing hierarchy at first: “Attack beats Taunt. Taunt beats Block. Block beats Attack.” They got so creative by looking at each mechanic’s color and associating it to college football. “OSU (red Attack) beat Northwestern University (purple Taunt), Northwestern (purple Taunt) beats Michigan (blue Block), and Michigan (blue Block) beats OSU (red Attack)”. It was hilarious and an obvious win for me since they found a tool to remember the rule! Once they had the rules down, the clashing became even more fierce, the game was quick, and it was a lot of fun.  After a few rounds of intense, multi-player clashing, they even admitted to liking Inoka even better!

Another family we met was our youngest mad scientist yet. He was only 2.5 years old and his mom and I were teaching him the world of RobotLab with a red torso. For children this young, we recommended to his mom the alternative ruleset for very young kids. The ruleset focuses on part cards, removes the action cards, and simplifies the rules by not allowing incorrect parts to be placed on Robots’ torsos. At one point, he discovered there were other Robots he can build and since his favorite color was green,  he was so adamant about building our green, RobotLab mascot. For him, we just started with the green torso and a variety of part cards where he quickly began detecting the correct color and Robot part placement. Once his robot was completed, he loved that victory dance we made the Robot do by shaking its arms.

Of course, for older kids more advanced rules can be played which allow for incorrect parts to be placed on your robot. In this case of this family and much to the chagrin of the brother, the older sister absolutely loved placing the wrong color parts on her brother’s robot. At the end of the game, the boy dismantled his robot before his mom could snap a photo. His mood did eventually change once he was offered candy.

International Games Day at Your Library has been one of our favorite events over the last few years. We absolutely have loved teaching our game to kids and adults alike and introducing tabletop games at such a young age. If you haven’t heard of this event or don’t live in Chicago, ask you local library! Libraries around the world participate in this event and it’s such a great opportunity to find new activities or games for kids.