So much happened at PrezCon that I think I'll take it a little bit at a time. Wednesday opened with an introduction to Leaping Lemmings by one of the designers, Rick Young (the other being John Poniske, the publisher being GMT). My good friend Glenn Weeks was already familiar with the game, so we jumped in for a heat, which was going very well - until one of my lemmings failed miserably at what would have been a five-point cliff dive if not for an ill-timed rock slide. Despite my last-place finish, this was a great diversion, and I'd love to try it out on the kids.
LL is a nice light-hearted title with a decent degree of strategy. It vaguely reminds me of Lost World: Jurassic Park from the standpoint of being a fox-and-geese kind of game (outnumbered predators trying to catch prey running the length of the board), but LL is far superior to Lost World from a play balance standpoint. Rather than having predator players vs. prey players, everyone controls one faction of prey (lemmings), and control of the predators (eagles) rotates around the board. It would be interesting to modify LW:JP along the same lines.
Unfortunately, LL sold out pretty quickly at PrezCon. We all found it surprising that GMT would release this kind of title. GMT has a reputation for solid wargames and a few other represented genres, but LL is downright goofy by comparison with their usual line-up. It's very interesting to see GMT branch out in this direction. Regardless, LL is now at the top of my wish-list for family games.
More posts to follow over the next few days - games played and lost, games bought, and the status of a game sold.
Leaping Lemmings sounds like a fun game. Now I want to try it! (I like goofy games :)).
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