Spielfreaks, Ltd.

Eamon Bloomfield started this company, to make one game, Lemming, his own design. He realised it had limited commercial appeal to a game company, but he liked it. Trouble is, he had no money so it was made on the cheap. Poor quality box, playing cards for the card play element of the game, graphics done as a favour. Around 200 copies were made and sold out within three months, at a break-even figure. That was going to be that until he had a chance meeting with Darwin P Bromley, of Mayfair Games, in the lobby of the Toy Building in New York City. Eamon had long admired an early Mayfair game called Family Business, a good game but let down by the fact that it was made with poor quality cards. Darwin graciously agreed to let Spielfreaks make an edition and Eamon went overboard. The best box money could buy. Great graphics by Mark Bromley. And cards made by the premiere card manufacturer in Europe, Carta Mundi (who went on to be more famously linked with Magic the Gathering). The result was a superb quality edition that lost money on every trade sale. Such is the vagaries of the game business. After this last grand hurrah, Spielfreaks was no more.