Icehouse pieces
Various Icehouse pieces
|
|
| Other name(s) |
|
|---|---|
| Manufacturer(s) | Grand Prix International |
| Designer(s) | John Cooper Andrew Looney |
| Publisher(s) | Looney Labs |
| Publication date | 1989 |
| Years active | 1987-present |
| Genre(s) | Game system |
| Website | icehousegames |
Icehouse pieces, or icehouse pyramids, Treehouse pieces 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 in 1987, originally for use in the game of Icehouse.
Andrew Looney in 1987 penned a sci-fi short story, "Ice House", that included a game called Icehouse, an ancient Martian game. 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 first commercially available set were solid non-stackable pyramids released in 1989 with only 100 set made. The pieces were made from resin in his apartment which upset the landlord. After several years, Looney shut down Icehouse Games, Inc. and soon started another gaming company, Looney Laboratories, 1996.
Additional games beyond Icehouse were created including Martian Chess, Zendo, and Homeworlds. Looney then created the IceTowers game which used stacking pyramids leading to a change in the pyramid pieces' specification for stacking.
In 2001, Icehouse: The Martian Chess Set won the Origins Award for Best Abstract Board Game of 2000. In 2004, the Zendo boxed set won Best Abstract Board Game of 2003, In 2005 the set won the Mensa Select Game Award., while in 2007, Treehouse won the Origins Award for Best Board Game of 2006.
Looney Labs relaunched the Icehouse pieces as "Looney Pyramids" with new packaging in its IceDice set in June 2011 followed by Pink Hijinks in December 2012. By 2013, the IcehouseGames.org website listed 400 games playable with icehouse pyramids.
In April 2016, Looney Labs launched a Kickstarter campaign for a new boxed pyramid set, Pyramid Arcade. The campaign was highly successful, raising nearly five times the original goal of $33,000.
The pieces are four sided pyramids that can nest and stack with pipping from 1 to 3 at the base. A group of three pyramids of each size is called a "trio." Each "stash" or set of Icehouse pieces consists of five trios, or fifteen pyramids (variously called pieces, pyramids, or minions) of the same color and five of each three sizes: five large 3-point pyramids (called "queens" in some games), five medium 2-point pyramids (sometimes called "drones"), and five small 1-point pyramids (or "pawns"). The stacked and nested feature is not used in the original Icehouse game, but is taken advantage of in some of the other Icehouse-based games listed below.
...
Wikipedia