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. Andrew and Kristin Looney together founded the games company

Looney Labs Looney Labs, Inc. is a small game company based in College Park, Maryland, United States. It is named after its founders, Andrew Looney and Kristin Looney, and is best known for creating the Fluxx line of card games. The company has three U.S. pat ...

, where Andrew is the chief creative officer. Looney Labs has published most of his game designs, such as ''

Fluxx ''Fluxx'' is a card game, played with a specially designed deck published by Looney Labs. It is different from most other card games, in that the rules and the conditions for winning are altered throughout the game, via cards played by the players ...

'', '' Chrononauts'', and the ''Icehouse'' game system. His other game designs include ''

Aquarius Aquarius may refer to: Astrology * Aquarius (astrology), an astrological sign * Age of Aquarius, a time period in the cycle of astrological ages Astronomy * Aquarius (constellation) * Aquarius in Chinese astronomy Arts and entertainme ...

'', '' Nanofictionary'', '' IceTowers'', ''

Treehouse A tree house, tree fort or treeshed is a platform or building constructed around, next to or among the trunk or branches of one or more mature trees while above ground level. Tree houses can be used for recreation, work space, habitation, a hang ...

'', and '' Martian Coasters''.

Biography

Andrew Looney as a youth became an Eagle Scout. 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. He and Kristin, his future spouse, met in 1986 when he started at

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

's Goddard Space Flight Center as a software programmer. Kristin was a computer engineer designing computer chips. Keeping English as a side interest, he wrote "The Empty City", a science-fiction short story. Wanting a game in the story but feeling a card game as too boring, he created a fictional game, Icehouse, that used pyramids. Readers of the short story requested to learn how to play the game. Thus actual rules were invented for Icehouse, then plastic pyramid pieces were made to play the game. The pieces were made from resin in his apartment, which upset the landlord due to the smell. This led them to launch their own game company to sell the Icehouse game. After several years, Looney shut down Icehouse Games, Inc. He and his wife launched Looney Laboratories in 1996 as a part-time home based design company. Andrew soon designed the

card game. He then went on to a brief career as a game programmer at Magnet Interactive Studios, where he created that company's only entry to the market, ''Icebreaker''. Aquarius was Andy's and Labs' next game, launched in 1998. In 2002, a few years after Kristin went full-time with their company, Andy followed.

Patents & awards

Andy has three U.S. patents and five Origins Awards. Looney holds

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...

s on the game mechanics for: * '' Icehouse'' - U.S. Patent 4,936,585 - Method of manipulating and interpreting playing pieces ** https://patents.google.com/patent/US4936585A * '' IceTowers'' - U.S. Patent 6,352,262 - Method of conducting simultaneous gameplay using stackable game pieces ** https://patents.google.com/patent/US6352262B1 * '' Chrononauts'' - U.S. Patent 6,474,650 - Method of simulation time travel in a card game ** https://patents.google.com/patent/US6474650B1 Looney has won the following game design awards: * 1999 — Mensa Mind Games: Mensa Select Award for ''

'' * 2000 — Origins Award: Best Abstract Board Game for '' Icehouse: The Martian Chess Set'' *'' Chrononauts'' ** 2000 — Origins Award: Best Traditional Card Game ** 2001 — Parents Choice Silver Honors * 2001 — Origins Award: Best Abstract Board Game for '' Cosmic Coasters'' * 2003 — Parents Choice Silver Honors ''Nanofictionary'' * 2007 — Origins Award: Best Board Game or Expansion of the Year for ''

'' * 2008 — Origins Award: Best Traditional Card Game of the Year for '' Zombie Fluxx''34th Annual Origins Award Winners
* Fall 2013 - Parents' Choice Recommended Seal category Games for ''Fluxx: The Board Game'' * Spring 2014 - Parents' Choice FunStuff Award for Loonacy

Works

* ''

'' * '' Chrononauts'' ** ''Early American Chrononauts'' * '' Cosmic Coasters'' * ''

'' ** ''EcoFluxx'' ** ''Family Fluxx'' ** ''

Zombie A zombie ( Haitian French: , ht, zonbi) is a mythological undead corporeal revenant created through the reanimation of a corpse. Zombies are most commonly found in horror and fantasy genre works. The term comes from Haitian folklore, in w ...

Fluxx'' ** '' Monty Python Fluxx'' ** ''

Martian Mars, the fourth planet from the Sun, has appeared as a setting in works of fiction since at least the mid-1600s. It became the most popular celestial object in fiction in the late 1800s as the Moon was evidently lifeless. At the time, the pr ...

Fluxx'' ** '' Stoner Fluxx'' ** ''Star Fluxx'' ** '' Cartoon Network Fluxx'' ** '' Regular Show Fluxx'' ** ''

Adventure Time ''Adventure Time'' is an American fantasy animated television series created by Pendleton Ward for Cartoon Network and distributed by Warner Bros. Domestic Television. The series follows the adventures of a boy named Finn (Jeremy Shada) and ...

Fluxx'' ** ''Holiday Fluxx'' ** ''

Cthulhu Cthulhu is a fictional cosmic entity created by writer H. P. Lovecraft. It was first introduced in his short story " The Call of Cthulhu", published by the American pulp magazine ''Weird Tales'' in 1928. Considered a Great Old One within the p ...

Fluxx'' ** ''Pirate Fluxx'' ** '' Oz Fluxx'' ** ''Monster Fluxx'' * ''

Icebreaker An icebreaker is a special-purpose ship or boat designed to move and navigate through ice-covered waters, and provide safe waterways for other boats and ships. Although the term usually refers to ice-breaking ships, it may also refer to smaller ...

'' * '' Icehouse'' and other games played with the

Icehouse pieces Icehouse pieces, or Icehouse Pyramids, Treehouse pieces, Treehouse Pyramids and officially Looney Pyramids, are nestable and stackable pyramid-shaped gaming pieces and a game system. The game system was invented by Andrew Looney and John Cooper i ...

: ** '' IceTowers'' ** '' Martian Chess'' ** ''

'' ** ''Zark City'' * '' Nanofictionary'' * ''Proton'' * ''Q*Turn''

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Looney, Andrew 1963 births Board game designers Chess variant inventors Living people