I'm not going to bury the lede, so here's an announcement that I am incredibly pleased to be making... A game that I started working on as a co-design with Mike Harrison-Wood over five years ago, which I have discussed here a under the title Grab Bag Zoo got signed with Gibsons Games last year, and after a lightning fast period of development is, as they say, On Shelves Now (or at least imminently), published under the title Grab Bag Jungle.
![]() |
The box is pretty full with all this stuff that comes in it. |
So, how did we get here, and where is here?
Just to sum up the history, the game started as Mike and I were chatting in the Playtest Zone at the Dragonmeet convention in December 2019. The idea was to look into possible uses of tactility in a game. We had a few vague ideas between us, and we agreed to think about possibilities and then compare notes in the new year. One of the things I remember about this period was filling a cloth bag with toy farm animals and having a group of friends, who were visiting us at Christmas, feeling in the bag for an animal and trying to guess what they had grabbed.
Anyway, come the new year we put our heads together and soon had something playable. Each player had a bag of wooden animals that we had acquired a stock of, then everyone was pulling animals out of their bag to place on a personal board, and every now and then everyone had to pass their bag to the next player for a bit of additional chaos. A sand timer was also introduced pretty early on in the development. It was fun but faffy.
We started to iterate and refine, got down to sharing one bag between everyone, were experimenting with housing animals in areas on a board representing a map of a zoo, and then... Covid got out of hand and the lockdowns started.
While a lot of game designers (including me) started moving to using online virtual prototypes in order to keep working on games, that just wasn't an option for this game, so it just got put on hold for a couple of years.
Gradually we got back up and running, spent a lot of time mostly simplifying things, and started getting really positive experiences (with the occasional hiccup) with playtesters of all types, including kids. Eventually we (with a huge amount of help from game designer friend David Mortimer) pitched the game to Gibsons a little under a year ago, they said "yes" while we were all at last year's UK Games Expo, and we signed contracts not long afterwards to be published this spring. If you are not aware of the way board game publishing works, this is ridiculously fast and not something we would normally expect, but it turned out that the game was a perfect fit for a set of games they wanted to release this year.
The game has turned from a vague zoo theme to a nicer "return animals to their habitat" framing, and the animals are now a selection of South American species, illustrated in an adorable style by Gibsons' own Lauren Heywood-Law, who frankly did a stunning job. What is more, the animal pieces are now huge and chonky, and so satisfying to handle. Other than the art and high quality components, there have been a few very minor changes, but otherwise, the game is pretty much as we pitched it, which is gratifying.
![]() |
The new set of animals are so much bigger and fancier than the ones we used in the prototype. |
Grab Bag Jungle is part of a set of four new games that Gibsons are releasing this spring, all pretty small, but with a variety of different hooks and play styles. The one that really appeals to me is called Swapple, covered with beautiful flower and insect artwork, and I'm looking forward to getting hold of a copy.
Anyway, I received my sample copies of the game over the weekend and was able to play a few rounds with the family, which felt amazing. And I am now the proud owner of a load of sloth meeples! So now I get to tick off another item on the list: I actually have a game published that people can buy in a shop - at the time of writing, the game has been spotted at a couple of online retailers, and brick-and-mortar places should follow soon. Thank you to everyone who helped to get us to this point. If you get to try the game, I hope you enjoy it.