Yes, it’s official: Legend of the Cipher – The Game of Hip-Hop is finally released to the public. This is the tabletop hip-hop deckbuilding game I’ve been working on for the past year. We had our grand release just a week ago, at PAX East, where many dozens of people sat down to try their hand at the game, and it was gratifying to note that almost all of them really enjoyed themselves. Many were delighted at the unique idea, as I had been a year ago when I first saw the game and decided to join up. So, the game is now available to purchase through the Game Crafter, a POD outfit.*

We’ve gotten just a touch of press after our first week of released game. A fellow who demoed the game wrote up a review about Legend of the Cipher at PAX East. Then AllHipHop.com wrote up an article about how Card game Legend of the Cipher teaches players how to win the real Rap Game. The video at the end of that article may or may not include a few brief clips of my terrible freestyles along with various players demoing the game. But the real joy was watching gamers who had never rapped in their life, go from being too afraid to rap, to rapping, in just minutes. I have no doubt that anyone playing this game regularly would become a much better freestyle rapper.**

Anyway, I’ll hope to have yet more updates about that later, but feel free to go buy the game now. Speaking of games, I recently reviewed Zen Garden on BGG. And speaking of things I write, this past month I’ve written two columns I’m quite pleased with, one about a Chrono Detective, and one that’s a simple Pope Quiz. And speaking of creative output***, I attended more poetry events, have upcoming comedy events, and hopefully will get back to writing my next book now that PAX is over.

*Technically, although fully playable, this is still a beta version, as we are hoping to gather enough demand to one day do a mass printing. But who knows when that will happen, and meanwhile this is the real deal, full color quality cards and all, and it’s pretty dang fun.

**Improv troupe members, take note.

***And speaking of weak segues…