Andy Looney

Andrew J. Looney (born November 5, 1963) is a game designer and computer programmer. He is also a photographer, a cartoonist, a video-blogger, and a marijuana-legalization advocate. where Andrew is the chief creative officer. His other game designs include Aquarius, Nanofictionary, IceTowers, Treehouse, and Martian Coasters. Looney's father worked for NASA, and Looney started playing computer games in his father's office at an early age, using his father's mainframe access to play text adventures and an ASCII-based Star Trek game. When Looney's father built a home computer, Looney used it to write primitive computer games. He entered the University of Maryland at College Park in 1981 as a freshman with an undecided major between English and computer science. He eventually selected computer science, thinking that he could get a job in computer programming and pursue a free-lance writing career in his spare time.

Pursuing his dream to become a freelance write, Looney wrote "The Empty City", a science-fiction short story. Wanting a game in the story but feeling a card game was too boring, he created a fictional game, Icehouse, that used pyramids. Readers wanted to learn how to play the game, and Looney responded by co-creating (with John Cooper and Kristin) actual rules, then plastic pyramid pieces to play Icehouse.

Looney and Kristin launched Looney Laboratories in 1996 as a part-time home based design company. Andrew soon designed the Fluxx card game. 2007 – Origins Award: Best Board Game or Expansion of the Year for Treehouse 2008 – Origins Award: Best Traditional Card Game of the Year for Zombie Fluxx Fall 2013 – Parents' Choice Recommended Seal category Games for Fluxx: The Board Game Spring 2014 – Parents' Choice FunStuff Award for Loonacy

Works

Aquarius Chrononauts Early American Chrononauts Cosmic Coasters Fluxx EcoFluxx Family Fluxx Zombie Fluxx Monty Python Fluxx Martian Fluxx Stoner Fluxx Star Fluxx Cartoon Network Fluxx Regular Show Fluxx Adventure Time Fluxx Holiday Fluxx Cthulhu Fluxx Pirate Fluxx Oz Fluxx Monster Fluxx Icebreaker Icehouse and other games played with the Icehouse pieces: IceTowers Martian Chess Treehouse Zark City Nanofictionary Proton Q*Turn