2018 Year End

As December draws to a close, we wanted to take a moment to look back on what has been a crazy year that had its successes, its disappointments, some goals achieved, others postponed, and more than its share of stress. It has been a mixed bag of a year, but ends with a lot of optimism and promise for 2019. So here are just a few of the things that have happened during the past 12 months.

Go Fish Fitness is Sold Out

We are proud to announce that all remaining inventory from our successful 2017 Kickstarter campaign for Go Fish Fitness has officially sold out! Our English language copies have been sold out for some time, but the last of our French language inventory is now gone as well.

If you are interested in obtaining a copy, our Print & Play edition is still available in our store and includes instructions for making your own deck or using a print service such as Print & Play Games to order your own print-on-demand high-quality copy.

We do have plans to produce a second printing of Go Fish Fitness, but both timeline and budget constraints will mean that it won’t be available until late-2019 at the earliest.

F5 – Hippodice 2018 Finalist

In late 2017 we submitted a prototype of F5 to the Hippodice 2018 Design Competition. The competition receives more than 100 entries each year of which 30 are selected for the main round, and 13 advance to the final round. In March we received notification that F5 had been selected as one of the 13 game design finalists!

Although F5 did not receive an award, simply having made the final round amongst a field of great designs by amazing designers was quite an honour – especially for a game still in the middle of the development process. Overall F5 received excellent marks from the evaluators for Fun, and exceptional marks for Creativity.

Since the results of the competition were released, we have continued to refine F5 and improve the game taking into consideration the feedback we received as well as many other playtests. There is still much work to be done, but a 2019 Kickstarter campaign is well within the realm of possibility.

Upcoming Releases – Rainbow Connections and Faerie’s Run

This year’s annual GenCan’t design contest was sponsored by ButtonShy to make an 18-card gam. In the lead up to the contest, we came up with 2 new designs.

Rainbow Connections – Create beautiful rainbows of colour across the board by placing, rotating, and shifting cards to align your rainbow by lining up colours from Red to Violet. The player who can align the longest and brightest rainbows when the last card is played wins.

Faerie’s Run – The happy pixie and the grumpy goblin are chasing one another through the faerie woods along the twisting and ever-changing paths leaving a trail of verdant greenery, or brown wilting plantlife in their wake. Faerie’s Run is a game that combines elements of Tsuro and Othello where each player tries to manoevre and flip as many maze-like tiles to their colour before landing on the same tile as their opponent and ending the game. The player with the most tiles of their colour when the game ends is the winner.

The release date for both designs will be early-2019 here in Print & Play format.

Tricorn / Flatout Games Playtest Group

During the summer, Tricorn Games partnered with Flatout Games to run a joint public playtest group with a rotating group of volunteers that meets biweekly. Playtest sessions are typically scheduled a week in advance with information about the games being played and a request for signups from the group. 2-4 participants are then selected from those who have signed up to participate.

If you live in (or are visiting) the Winnipeg MB area and are interested in participating in a playtest, please use the Contact Form with the subject line “Playtest” to get in touch.

New Space

Much of the difficulty and stress we experienced during the past year can be directly attributed to the construction and finishing of our new space. This is a project that began several years ago when investigating a leaking roof revealed severe structural problems caused by many decades of rot and decay that threatened to collapse the roof and entire upper floor directly into the building next door.

After more than a year and a half of dealing with engineers, banks, contractors, and the permit office – we were finally able to proceed with demolition and construction in November 2017. This project was finally completed in March but as a consequence required that we undertake several weeks of mold remediation in the basement, and a near complete renovation of the lower floor (which is still ongoing but nearing completion).

These projects have been a severe drain on both time and financial resources - leading to a year in which we accomplished far less than we were hoping to do – but the outcome is an incredible space to work and play that we are thrilled to show off here.

Thank You 

Thank you all for reading this and for continuing to follow us as we work towards a successful 2019. We wish you all the best for the new year!