WHO WE ARE
Hamster Press/Klingel-Engle Puppets is a small company in Southern Indiana dedicated to fun.
Hamster Press is all about games and books. Chris Engle invented Engle Matrix Games in 1988 and created the press to help spread the word. We publish and manufacture boxed board games, laminated folio games and Smyth sewn hand crafted books.
Klingel-Engle Puppets is all about puppets and toys. Terri Klingelhoefer is the lead puppeteer, doing puppets shows all over Indiana. She hand crafts puppets as well. In addition to this we sell a variety of other manufacturers' puppets and toys.
HAND CRAFT TRADITION
HP/KEP is housed in the out buildings of our 1850s farm house. For us fun is serious business, both of us come out of hand craft traditions and value well made items. The press uses modern computer printing and digital duplication to start the process but relies on hundred year old techniques for finishing. You have to love a thousand pounds of steel! The puppet shop uses modern materials and a treadle sewing machine, just like my Grandmother did in the 1920s.
PUPPET PERFORMANCES
Klingel-Engle Puppets is available for performances within a four hour drive of Bloomington Indiana. Contact Terri Klingelhoefer for available shows, costs, and bookings.
WHAT IS AN ENGLE MATRIX GAME?
Engle Matrix Games are a simple game engine that allows players to simulate scenarios not easily done by other games. Whenever situations are fluid and up in the air, Matrix Games are there. Their flexibility comes from how turns are resolved. Rather than try to make up rules for every instance, players make an argument for what they want to happen next in the game. Another player sets a “to happen” roll and a dice toss later you know which actions become facts and which just didn’t happen. I know it sounds too simple (or too complicated) to work, but it does. Matrix Games are a low-tech way to game events that make supercomputers twitch.
What can you game with them? What about a murder mystery where no one knows who did it at the start of the game, that plays in 2 hours, and that never plays the same way twice? Or why not try a horror game in which the players discover a different evil plot each time and then save the world? Or maybe a literary game about a classic story that allows you to explore a universe of “what if” scenarios? Of course there are wargames and political campaigns. There are even games for education, psychotherapy and planning. So Matrix Games live in the space between boardgames and roleplaying games. They are neither fish nor fowl, but boy do they taste good!
THE STAFF
CHRIS ENGLE is a psychiatric social worker at Indiana University during the day and a game designer, book binder and puppet roadie at night. He has been playing games since 1976.
TERRI KLINGELHOEFER is a graduate student by day and a puppeteer and playwright by night. She started doing puppet shows as a child and never stopped the silliness.
CONTACT INFO
Hamster Press
7251 West State Road 46
Ellettsville, IN 47429
Questions and Feedback:
hamsterpress@gmail.com
http://www.hamsterpress.net
Chris Engle invented Matrix Games in 1988 and they have appeared at Gen Con every year since 1991.
Become a Fan
Corrections
Clone
Customize View
Subscribe
RSS Feed 
