The Great Brain Robbery is a board game designed by James Ernest and released in 2000 by Cheapass Games.
It is a wild west-themed sequel to Give Me the Brain , and the fourth in the Friedey's series of games. Players assume the role of zombies attempting to rob a speeding train full of brains. [1] The game is played on a board made up of train carriages, printed on eight double-sided boards. As the players move forward through the carriages, new ones are added and old ones fall off, giving a varied and changing game board. [1] The Great Brain Robbery was the first board game to come in a sturdy cardboard box. It includes 25 brain cards.[ citation needed ]
In 2001, The Great Brain Robbery won the Origins Award for Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Board Game 2000. [2]
Fudge is a generic role-playing game system for use in freeform role-playing games. The name "FUDGE" was once an acronym for Freeform Universal DonatedGaming Engine and, though the acronym has since been dropped, that phrase remains a good summation of the game's design goals. Fudge has been nominated for an Origins Award for Best Role-Playing Game System for the Deryni Adventure Game.
Steve Jackson Games (SJGames) is a game company, founded in 1980 by Steve Jackson, that creates and publishes role-playing, board, and card games, and the gaming magazine Pyramid.
Kill Doctor Lucky is a humorous board game designed by James Ernest and released in 1996 by Cheapass Games. In 1998, Kill Doctor Lucky won the Origins Award for Best Abstract Board Game of 1997.
Cheapass Games is a game company founded and run by game designer James Ernest, based in Seattle, Washington. Cheapass Games operates on the philosophy that most game owners have plenty of dice, counters, play money, and other common board game accessories, so there is no need to bundle all of these components with every game that requires them. Cheapass games thus come packaged in white envelopes, small boxes, or plastic resealable bags containing only those components unique to the game - typically a rules sheet, a playing board printed on card stock, and game cards banded by magazine-cutout "sleeves". This allows the company to produce games for prices well below the market average. Later, Cheapass started offering some higher-quality, full color games under the "James Ernest Games" brand.
Chrononauts is a family of card games that simulates popular fictional ideas about how time travellers might alter history, drawing on sources like Back to the Future and the short stories collection Travels Through Time. The game was designed by Andrew Looney and is published by Looney Labs. The original game and a variant each won the Origins Award for Best Traditional Card Game.
Give Me the Brain is a discard-style card game designed by James Ernest and released in 1996 by Cheapass Games. In the game, players assume the role of zombies attempting to complete their tasks for the day at Friedey's, "the fast food restaurant of the damned", yet they only have one brain to share between them. The game inspired several sequels, all set at Friedey's.
Button Men is a two-player dice game invented by James Ernest of Cheapass Games, first released in 1999.
Brawl is a real-time card game designed by James Ernest and released in 1999 by Cheapass Games.
Before I Kill You, Mr. Bond is a card game designed by James Ernest and published by Cheapass Games. Players take the roles of supervillains in a spy movie, capturing superspies and taunting them. Other players can foil the taunts by playing another taunt with a letter that corresponds to the first taunt. If this happens, the superspy escapes and destroys the fortress of the player attempting to kill him.
Fightball is a real-time card game designed by James Ernest and Mike Selinker and published by Cheapass Games in 2002. Fightball is the third real-time card game published by Cheapass Games, following the success of Falling and Brawl.
Devil Bunny Needs a Ham is a board game by Cheapass Games for 2-4 players. In the game, sous-chefs try to climb up a building while Devil Bunny attempts to knock them off in the mistaken belief that doing so will get him a ham.
Falling is a real-time card game from James Ernest in which all players are falling from the sky for no apparent reason. The object of the game is to hit the ground last. As the box copy says, "It's not much of a goal, but it's all you could think of on the way down."
Lord of the Fries is a card game created by James Ernest and published by Cheapass Games and Steve Jackson Games. In 2008, Steve Jackson Games released a new edition with revised game components. In 2015, Cheapass Games released a fourth edition and four expansion decks. Lord of the Fries takes place at Friedey's: The Fast Food Restaurant of the Damned. Other games that take place there include Give Me the Brain and Change!.
J. Hunter Johnson is a freelance American game designer, author, and translator. He has translated many game rules and websites from German for Mayfair Games. He has authored or co-authored six books for Steve Jackson Games, including GURPS Monsters and GURPS Japan and designed two games for White Wolf Publishing, including gToons, which proved popular among children on Cartoon Network's Cartoon Orbit children's website and left an impact on how such websites use digital trading cards for online gaming.
Girl Genius: The Works is a card game announced in March 2001 as scheduled for an April 2001 release, and was out by summer as it was reviewed in July 2001. It is played with a specially designed deck of 108 cards. The game, designed by Phil Foglio and James Ernest, takes its theme from the "gaslamp fantasy" of the Girl Genius comic book series. The goal is to be the first player to reach 100 points by "popping" cards out of a two-dimensional layout.
Diceland is a tabletop game played with collectible sets of dice designed by Toivo Rovainen and James Ernest and released in 2002 by Cheapass Games. Players roll paper cut-out octahedral dice into a combat arena. The dice are then used in the same way as miniatures - they can be moved around the arena and attack other dice.
One False Step for Mankind is a board game designed by James Ernest and published by Cheapass Games in 2003. Players play the role of town mayors, seeking to become governor of California in 1849. According to the game rules "It's one false step for Mankind, one giant leap for you." This is a clear play on astronaut Neil Armstrong's first spoken words on the surface of the Moon in 1969.
RoboRally is a board game for 2–8 players designed by Richard Garfield and published by Wizards of the Coast (WotC) in 1994. Various expansions and revisions have been published by both WotC and by Avalon Hill.
U.S. Patent No. 1 is a board game designed by Falko Goettsch & James Ernest, and published by Cheapass Games in 2001.
Safari Jack is a 1998 board game published by Cheapass Games.