Merillian Blog » Flibbix

The Washington Post’s Top 2008 Toy Pick: Flibbix

Jason — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 01:09:47 +0000

We’re gamers and love toys, too. So we were as excited as anyone else to see The Washington Post’s write up of their picks for Best Toys and Games of Holiday ‘08. Well, maybe a bit more excited since Flibbix was their top pick. .You can read a reprint of The Post’s article here, or click the picture to see what the article looked like in its half-sheet glory. Oh, and we’ll be sure to check out some of the other fun stuff on The Post’s list. Some of it looks like a blast..

Top 20 Holiday Toys

Jason — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 20:07:03 +0000

Great Value Toys for the Holidays

Toy Directory Monthly just released their picks for 2008 Top Holiday Toys. “If you’re expecting good value for your holiday dollars, TDmonthly can show you 20 great toys that kids will play with long after the celebrations are over.”

It’s great to see that Flibbix made the Top 20 Toys list for this holiday season! Check out the video for some great holiday gift ideas. For those in a hurry, you can jump to the 2:30 mark, but it’s worth watching the whole video.

You can click this link to read the transcript, or click the image to jump to the video.

Flibbix front page at Barnes & Noble Jr!

Jason — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 15:58:29 +0000

We try to reserve news items for the Merillian.com home page instead of our blog, but this was just too fun to pass up. Flibbix is currently the featured board game on Barnes & Noble Jr.!

Go to www.bn.com to get to the main Barnes & Noble web site.
Click the “B&N Jr.” tab to get to all B&N kids stuff.
Check out the Board Game category!

Flibbix is featured out of all the kids games they carry. Very exciting stuff! We were at our local Barnes & Noble store recently and saw a few copies left on the shelf, so it looks like product is now available at your local store, too.

If you’d rather save one click, here’s a direct link to the B&N Jr. page and one direct to the Flibbix page.

Flibbix Intro Movie

Jason — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 00:10:18 +0000

Flibbix in 100 seconds—

We’ve gotten a lot of requests for a Flibbix intro/demo movie. We think you’re onto a great idea, so we took your advise and made one. Flibbix is an amazingly fun game, and we’d like to see more people experience the joy of making a game that’s perfect for them. It’s such a revolutionary new idea that it helps for people to visually see how it works to really “get” the concept. So we finally got that intro video posted. You can find a YouTube version here…

…or you can view it in higher quality QuickTime format. Click the images below for a medium-size movie (7.6MB) or a large (17MB) high-def movie that show you how to build a board game (or make a board game) with Flibbix—and what all the buzz is about.

How to Make a Board Game: Part Three

Jason — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:05:18 +0000

Cards for your Board Game –

This is the third in our series of how to make a board game. While you can use some of these concepts to make your own board game out of cardboard or paper, making a game with Flibbix is easier and gives you a lot more opportunity to change and “tweak” things later. This makes it easier to experiment and make a board game that works well and is really fun to play.

In our first post, we covered making or building a game board with Flibbix tiles. In our second post, we talked about making rules for your board game. Here, we look at using cards in your board game.

Flibbix comes with 40 cards that you can use with your board game. You can use all, or just some, of the cards to change how your game plays. There are different types of cards that are used for (you guessed it) different things:

Social Cards: These are cards that get people interacting, getting to know each other, and having fun. Some examples: Human Spinner, Three of a Kind, Color Favorites, etc. You may want to play a game using only these cards, or—if you don’t like using them—pull them out of the deck before you play. The same goes for any other category of cards…
Movement Cards: These move you or other players around the game board. Some examples: Zap!, Move Ahead, Move Back, Switch with Opponent, etc.
Turn Modification Cards: These change your roll, move, or turn. Examples: Fast Lane (doubles your roll), Slow Lane (halves your roll), Roll Reversal™ (reverses your roll), etc.
Board Changers: These let you change the game board around during the game. Some examples: Tile Swap, Tile Flip, Swap & Flip Start and Finish, etc.
Protection Cards: Avoid getting moved, swapped, or having your turn modified (by a Slow Lane, for example.). You can save these cards, and use them whenever you want to protect against a card or tile action. They come in handy when you’re almost at Finish and you land on a Switch with Opponent tile.
Other Action Cards: Can be just about anything: Break the Rules (change a rule on the rule sheet), Get Picky (draw cards), Extra Turn, Lose a Turn, etc.

Even more cool are Flibbix Custom Cards™. These can be anything you want. They could be an action like one of those above, or anything you can imagine. Just put your “action” for the card on your rule sheet before beginning your game:

Here are some that people came up with in games we played recently:

Do ten pushups
Sing a song in [insert cartoon character's name]’s voice
Swap cards with the player across from you
Etc.

If you want to create cards for your own custom board game, you might want to try experimenting with Flibbix and Custom Cards first. It gives you a chance to try out your creations. We love being creative and making fun stuff. We think Flibbix is the easiest and best way for most people to make their own games, but you can also try making board game cards out of paper or blank business card templates from an office supply store, too.

The important thing is having fun, playing with others, and getting a chance to be creative.

In our next post, we’ll look at game play.