My big release for this year's Gen Con is Thunder Hamsters. It's a hybrid boardgame/Engle Matrix Game in which hamster heroes run into the temple and steal things. When they have an encounter they "tussle" with it. This means they make up a short description of what happens and pick another player to decide how likely it is to happen. Other players can jump in with counter-arguments. Dice rolls settle what (if anything) happens. This is a light hearted game that is not strictely a story game but does use the same rules I use in my other games.
Other new games this year are:
Sherlock Holmes: The Return of Col. Moran
The Graveyard Shift (a Cthulhu game)
Oswald's Genie
Punch and Judy - a puppet play game
Blood and Puppets - another puppet play game with pirates and ninjas (because I'm looking for that one person at Gen Con who has been waiting for a puppet board game.)
Chris Engle
hamsterpress.net
This is a great game for Thunder Hamsters, since you can sell it as G-Force (http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/gforce/) (the kids movie, not the 70s anime!) crossover.
Though, I suppose, they are technically guinea pigs in G-Force.
Yeah, when you mentioned this game (Thunder Hamsters and the Temple of Cheese) before, it really sparked my interest. My oldest daughter is 7 and has a bit of an interest in gaming -but she's a little young yet for most of the games I have. I want to demo this one (will you have one open at your booth) and see if its a good match -sure sounds it!
Louis Hoefer
www.wholesumentertainment.com (http://www.wholesumentertainment.com)
I'll be demoing it at the booth the whole time and my demo team will be running full games in the con every day.
I'm certain a seven year old could play, the rules are very simple - you just make up how you handle encounters - but there are small tokens to mind the choking hazzard.
Chris Engle