SquarkBlog

I woke up really early and went down really early for breakfast. After yesterday's horrible traffic jam and parking experience, I decided to plan to be at the Messe early. Being early, I tried not to ogle at the buffet spread, as I was really hungry. After ordering coffee, I made a beeline for the delicious buffet line and also ordered an omelette. After settling down in my seat, I played my first game of the day: Spot the Gamer. Never heard of this game? It's an observation and deduction game. Here's how it works: Look around the restaurant discreetly. Observe the people eating and getting food. Take note of their appearance. What are they wearing? What are they eating? Do they look cheerful? What are they talking about?  If they are alone, are they in deep thought thinking about games? Do they laugh out loudly? Do they have a beard? Make your own conclusions.

I met my friends the day before today. We had a great dinner and chatted about whats hot and whats not last night. Today, we continued the discussion at breakfast. This was THE day of the ultimate games meetup. Our breakfast had a lovely buffet spread. Delicious Swiss cheeses, fresh fruit juices, sausages and salami. Ate a lot and had nice coffee. I secretly tried to spot other gamers in the breakfast room. One or two tables could be occupied by gamers. Not sure, though. We left the hotel around 9 am, and after a short drive, got caught in a traffic jam near the Essen Messe. Shyam thought this was strange, as usually, being a Thursday, the first day of Essen Spiele was normally pretty quiet. We were in a jam which nearly rival a KL rush hour jam, but more civilized. What was going on? What made it worse was the really fast-changing traffic lights which we encountered along the way. I guessed they were not used to this type of heavy traffic. When we finally reached the Messe, there were tons of people! Queues were building up at every entrance! What was going on? I dropped Shyam and daughter off by one of the entrances, as the queues were disconcerting and I was directed to a very distant car park. I found a parking space really far away from any of the entrances into the Messe. It was a long walk to my first Essen Spiele, but as I reached the nearest entrance. there was a buzz of excitement amongst the people there. Everyone was in a jovial mood. Ahh...the group effect of mass endorphin release...

Guten tag! Just got back from the ultimate games meetup in Essen Spiel 09! Had a really good time playing new games, discovering the vast variety of games available in Germany and Europe, and meeting new friends and game-related celebrities! I am preparing a Squark Blogs of my Essen experience, but meanwhile, I would like to announce our Games Meetups here in the following Borders Bookstores and Starbucks Coffee in Borders outlets in Malaysia.

The November 09 Games Meetups are scheduled as follows:

Guten Tag! Squark Games will be attending THE Ultimate Games Meetup: Internationale Spieltage SPIEL! In English, it's SPIEL 09-the international games convention in Essen, Germany, where thousands of gamers from all over the world gather in 8 convention halls, each as big as one convention hall in Mid Valley! This is more than 44,100 square meters of exhibition (read: gaming) space. This is THE games meetup for gamers of all ages and of all types. There will be casual gamers, as well as hard core gamers present. For many, this will be a great 4-days of gaming with friends and families. Some of these friends meet only once a year in Essen. We will be meeting old friends there as well as making new ones.

Spiel 09 begins on Thursday 22nd October and lasts until Sunday 25th October, providing 4 days filled with fun and excitement. No doubt most of the new game designs by hot game designers, e.g. Uwe Rosenberg, Reiner Knizia, Martin Wallace and Stephen Feld will attract lots of attention. Squark Games will be there trying out the new games as well as some of the older classics, and meeting up with game designers and suppliers. We will be playing games in the hotel after hours too with friends who cannot wait to try out new purchases.

Sunday morning, and I'm taking it easy. After a busy, but interesting week of delivering our new games to our retailers and introducing their staff to our new games, and also a day of introducing the friendly Bandar Utama residents to our new games at their multicultural Lantern Festival gathering yesterday, I slept in this morning. When I woke up, I prepared fresh Colombian coffee and had breakfast of chee cheong fun, a Baker's Dozen of donuts and Bananagrams.

 As I sipped the coffee and slurped the slippery chee cheong fun, I marveled at the cards of Baker's Dozen which do look like deliciously edible donuts. Baker's Dozen is one of our new food-themed games where each player has to fill up rows of donuts, but don't let the total value go over 13! If you do, you'll have to take all of the donut cards from the pile -- even the moldy, yucky ones! These are the donuts you will have to avoid because, apart from not being very tasty, these will give you double the points. Not good is the object of this quick game is to score the lowest points! This is a fascinating family card game designed by Reiner Knizia, game designer extraordinaire! I had good memories of Baker's Dozen as I played it with my regular gaming friends last week. A particular game was chaotic when there were three moldy donuts waiting for a player who would be forced to take them as part of their collection. Thankfully, it wasn't me!