As well as illustrating Children's books I publish satirical boardgames, and I'm excited to say we've just launched War on Terror Edition 2. Edition 1 of War on Terror the boardgame was launched in Nov 2006 and we've added lots of new cards, new rules and an awful lot of illustrations, there are probably 100% more drawings on the box cover alone, and it was pretty crammed before!
Last year the game was exhibited in the Berlin Academy of Arts for three months as part of the exhibition 'Embedded Art'. This exhibition looked at art in times of security. As part of the exhibition TerrorBull Games (the designers Andrew Sheerin and Andy Tompkins, and myself) were invited to participate in the "Long Night of the Museums". This is an annual event that sees museums across Berlin opening their doors and we were given the opportunity to perform as artists and play game, the museum had over 2000 people through the gallery that evening, it was quite a night.
We were chuffed when the game was used in Graham Linehan's sitcom 'The IT Crowd'. It's also in the permanent collections of the Imperial War Museum, the V&A museum of Childhood, The Glasgow Museum of Modern Art and The Bodleian Library Oxford. Some of the places that sell the game include the Saatchi, ICA, Serpentine and The Political Cartoon Gallery in London. It's sold by Amnesty International, under the banner of educational and the Nobel Peace Centre in Oslo also sells it which is pretty unique for a board game. And pretty mind boggling for us.
Here's some praise we've received for the game:
" C'est genial " - Tomi Ungerer
" New satirical heights " - Nobel Peace Centre
" At the tip of the sharp tongue of satire" - BBC
" Genius satire" - Amnesty International
" Through the fog of an often collusive and compliant media comes this extraordinary game, acheiving, with it black humour, it's own truth about the pernicious 'War on Terror'." - John Pilger
" War on Terror is perhaps the best board game in the world and maybe of all time ." - El Mundo
And now the game has just got, dare I say it, better than before, unless we've bungled it and ruined our reputations. It's very possible.
That's it for now, I'd better get safely back into the TerrorBull bunker.
Tom
TerrorBull Games recently designed a game for Greenpeace. Here's an excert from what they had to say about it.
"Now, at Greenpeace we have many skills, but designing board games isn't one of them. That's why we elected to work with the professional satirists and board game designers Terror Bull Games (One distinguisher between amateur satirists and professionals is the use of terrorbull puns in their company names). Maybe it's just us, but after reading that a copy of their satirical game 'War on Terror' was confiscated by the police during the climate camp protests* we thought they might be sufficiently mischievous.
And they were. One of the great things about working at Greenpeace is that you can pick up the phone, call someone, and sometimes get the response 'We love you guys. Of course we'd like to help'. Which is pretty much what happened."
To read the rest of the article and download the free game visit Greenpeace here.
