Home NewsLunte Author: Bruce Whitehill

Author: Bruce Whitehill

by Sezgin Güven

Bruce Whitehill has worked for our publishing company on the following games:

Author of the game

LUNTE

Author of the game

Outback Crossing

Bruce Whitehill is considered the world’s foremost authority on 20th Century American games and game companies. As a historian, he has written extensively on the products and people that defined the industry. His book, Games: American Games and Their Makers, 1822-1992, is the most authoritative work on the subject published. His second book, Americanopoly: America as Seen Through Its Games, was done in conjunction with an exhibition at the Swiss Museum of Games (Musée Suisse du Jeu) in La Tour-de-Peilz, using games from his collection.

Over the years, Bruce Whitehill was on the editorial staff of three (now-defunct) games magazines: He was the senior editor of Games Annual; the associate editor of Games Games Games, published in England; and the senior editor of Knucklebones. Before that, he edited the newsmagazine for the Association of Game & Puzzle Collectors, of which he was the founder, and then wrote and edited an online games and puzzles newsletter, All in the Game, and was a monthly columnist for the collectibles magazine, Toy Shop.

Known internationally as “The Big Game Hunter,” Bruce Whitehill conducted research making use of his large diversified collection of antique American games, with over 400 U.S. companies represented from 1843 to 2000 (many of his games are now at the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, NY, as well as other museums and private collections). He continues to add to an impressive collection of game advertisements, catalogs, books, and ephemera that he uses to help him with his games research.

Games are both an avocation and a vocation for Bruce Whitehill, who has spent over 35 years as a game inventor and consultant to the Toy and Game industry. He is the inventor of such games as “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not!” (Milton Bradley Company’s best seller for 1984), “The Fraggle Rock Game,” “Snoopy Card Game,” and “Centipede” (based on the computer game); his “Championship Baseball” was on exhibit at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. His “The Psychedelic Cipher Caper,” a mystery party game for teenagers, was a parlor game extension of his other vocation: writing and directing live-action, murder mystery dinner theater productions.

Bruce Whitehill, a native New Yorker who moved from the U.S. to Germany in 2005, continues to develop new games, and is expert at analyzing and enhancing game play and writing detailed instructions. His latest games have included “Change Horses,” a race game where players don’t know who owns which horse except for his own; “In or Out” (only in U.S.) and “High 5,” both party games; “Talat,” an intriguing three-player abstract strategy game in which each player plays against the other two on separate boards; “Lunte,” a quick card game in which a player has only two chances to score; and, most recently, “Outback Crossing,” a family-game (and good opener/closer for serious players) with a two-sided board where players get to see and play only one tile at a time, positioning it to try to build the best trails.

Bruce Whitehill

Bruce Whitehill

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