UK Games Expo - Birmingham, UK

First of all, grovelling apologies for the prolonged silence. We've been working on a couple of things and will have some cool news for you soon. Meanwhile, the UK Games Expo in Birmingham has snuck up on us. We're going! So should you. Here's why:

- It's only ten quid for a weekend ticket. That's a bargain. Loads of events going on.
- This is your first chance to play Crunch with the people who made it.
- We're going to experiment with a purely market-driven pricing structure for Crunch. This means that when people don't buy it, the price will go down; when people buy it, the price goes up. This may end disastrously for us, but it sounds like fun.
- As part of the above set up, we've bought some cool new props including an awesome bell. That may not sound too inspiring, but seriously, you guys - AWESOME. Visit us and we might let you ring it.
- There's no GenCon UK this year, so this is basically your gaming fix if you live in the UK.

We're also seriously, seriously low on War on Terror. It's looking like this will be the last of edition 1. Your last chance to buy a slice of history. Ah, the nostalgia pound, so untapped.

Hope to see you this weekend in sunny Brum!

6-hours-on-the-High-Street record broken!

Yes, it's hard to believe but we've broken our previous record of having a game for sale in a high street shop. Currently standing at just over one whole week and going strong, it's looking good ...

As keen followers of this blog will know, our previous record was around 6 hours, held by War on Terror on the shelves of Zavvi.

Now Borders in Cambridge (UK) have smashed that record by selling Crunch right by their tills for over a week (see picture for evidence). How awesome is that?

Inspired by this latest victory, we have contacted other high street outlets, including giants like Tesco, Toys R Us and Woolworths. While we're still struggling with the submissions process for Tesco and Toys R Us, at least they haven't turned us down yet. Still no reply from Woolies.

We need your support! If Crunch sells well in Cambridge Borders, then it may get recommended for nation-wide stores. This could be the small chink of an open door that we've been waiting for. Please, please, please if you or anyone you know lives near Cambridge and fancies a spot of financial foolery, then go to Borders and buy your copy there. Your reward will be a warm feeling deep inside that you've helped TerrorBull Games post record Q1 profits in 2009.

Only joking, we're skint. Government bail out please! Too big to fail! Etc. etc.

Salute 09

We returned to Salute this year to find the Docklands area swarming with police and searching traffic furniture. Had they been tipped off we were coming? No. They were simply, or we should say, thoroughly, preparing for Obama's visit.

With the ambulance packed full of War on Terror, Crunch and a healthy supply of Evil Balaclavas which, as you may know, have previously been branded criminal by Police we thanked our lucky stars we weren't stopped,searched and detained. So we happily drove the ambulance into the heart of the Excel centre nearly knocking over a number of stalls as we went.

Last year we sold out of War on Terror before the day was up. This year though we were unleashing Crunch into the public realm for the first time and didn't know what to expect.

Any fears we had concerning the reception to Crunch were laid to rest as it proved more popular than our much loved War on Terror. We're not sure but perhaps this was due to the fact that recently the Obama administration has tried to rebrand the War on terror as 'overseas contingency operations'.

Folk that approached our stand from the War on Terror end complimented us on our initiative and said, 'You guys should tackle the Credit Crunch' and we invited them to the other end of our TerrorBull tables where we were unveiling Crunch for the first time. Quite a few people stopped midway to comment on how useful the balaclavas could be that week with the G20 in town. So when anybody did buy a balaclava, we didn't ask any questions (we have had reports in the fetish scene that they are quite popular), but we did ask them to heed the label ; it has always read 'Play Nice'.

To all of those that attended, chatted, told us of great games nights you'd had and great games nights you were looking forward to, as well as all of you with newly acquired balaclavas, we thank you, and salute you all.

The Crunch is upon us!

You may be interested to know we've just launched our second game: Crunch - the game for utter bankers. It's a card game, comes in a double box and fitting to the subject matter only costs £8.99. That's like a medium cappuccino from Starbucks. So we expect all of you to buy at least six.

The game itself is a lot less involved than War on Terror, but no less fun. Everyone takes on the role of a CEO of a global bank and while managing that bank you have to award yourself enough bonuses and embezzle enough to safeguard a healthy retirement fund. It's this personal stash at the end of the game that decides who the real winners and losers are. It's kind of like betting against yourself - the more you take out of your bank for your personal fortune, the weaker your bank becomes and the quicker you're out of the game. Read more about the gameplay here.

With any luck, we'll rescue the global economy with this game, just like we ended the War on Terror with our last one.

Making of the Crunch

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The printers started rolling at the Crunch factory today and we went down to London to see the first copies come off the presses.

Having never been in an industrial printers before, it was quite an education: Hot, noisy and an overpowering smell of ink, We met the printer operators who were in charge of making sure Crunch will look as best it can. One of the surprises was how much more manual the process was that we thought. Despite a 1.5 million pound machine, everything ultimately relied on the trained and experienced eyes of the operators.

Colours checked and signed off, the moment of truth came and the printer was switched on. This thing can shift paper! About half an hour later and 5,000 sets of card backs had been printed. Pretty impressive.

Very exciting to see Crunch coming together. It's looking awesome and the wait now is killing us. Still, we have more than enough to occupy our thoughts and time until then ... like build this website.

Thanks to everyone at Carta Mundi who were so welcoming and friendly to us. It's good to know our second baby is in safe hands.