Turnstile, a game created by a Signal Mountain couple, was selected by at least one reviewer at the 2012 International Toy Fair in New York last month as the top-rated new single-player game.
A reviewer for Mbeans.com wrote, “This logic maze challenges players to navigate each piece to its proper corner of the board through a series of revolving turnstiles. As with all solitaire puzzle games, the levels range from fairly simple to extremely difficult. These sorts of logic puzzles are very popular as apps for i-devices, but ThinkFun did a great job of making the game pieces and the turnstiles so much fun to touch and manipulate that it’s hard to imagine wanting to trade the real thing for a swipe of the finger.”
The game, created by Steve and Kelley Hayton, asks a player to move pieces from one end of a board to another through a series of turnstiles. Depending on how the board is set up, completing the task or puzzle can take as few as four moves or as many as 27. The game comes with 40 cards showing how to set up the different puzzles. A deluxe version will be available with even more complicated levels, Steve Hayton said.
“I can generate challenges with 60 to 70 moves,” he said.
A software engineer by profession, Hayton said he has always liked games.
“I used to play board games, and I like chess, but I don’t play video games,” he said.
About three years ago, however, Hayton decided to try creating a new game that he would enjoy and that his children could play. He wanted to focus on logic games, rather than games of chance.
His first effort was called HobKnobs, a single-player, multilevel logic puzzle game made of wooden blocks. It was so well received by friends and colleagues, he and Kelley formed a limited-liability company called HobKnobs, and he set about creating more games. He now has 20 in varying degrees of development, he said.
He used his software building skills to come up with the idea and challenges for Turnstile. The Haytons licensed Turnstile to ThinkFun, a logic game manufacturer to develop and manufacture.
Hayton said seeing his game and the reaction it got at Toy Fair was a big thrill.
“My wife was pretty giddy actually,” he said. “It was exciting. It was the fastest game picked up by foreign distribution.”
The game is rated for ages 8 to adult and will sell for $19.95. It can be purchased now at Amazon.com or thinkfun.com and should be in stores later.