Ginger Fox’s Lewis Allen, Louisa Osmond and Benji Toner-Clewes talk us through their latest slate

Guys, it’s great to tie-in. Last year saw Professor Puzzle acquire Ginger Fox. What impact has that had on your capabilities and areas of interest?
Lewis Allen, Product Development Director, Ginger Fox: Since the acquisition, it’s become clear that we’re very complementary businesses! Professor Puzzle predominantly focuses on retailer-bespoke business… Ginger Fox is focused on the catalogue business. The product development process is very different on both.

How so?
Lewis: It’s more intense and fast-moving on the bespoke side because they’re working with buyers and trends. On the Ginger Fox side, we spend a little more time in development – but on fewer lines. Both teams benefit from seeing how the other works and we’ve been successful in sharing ideas and resources to generate even better product across the board for 2025.

You’ll see some of the most exciting things to come from the acquisition over the next 18 months. It’s a very exciting time for us all!

Let’s look at some of your new titles, starting with Beaks…
Benji Toner-Clewes, Product Developer, Ginger Fox: We found this at a speed-pitching event at UK Games Expo last year. It comes from an inventor called James Parkes. I instantly fell in love with it and wanted to bring it back to the team. From there, the support the Ginger Fox gang gave it went from strength to strength.

Louisa Osmond, Senior Product Developer, Ginger Fox: It’s one of those games that people want to play again and again – which is always a great sign! Beaks sees everyone frantically trying to grab food – playing as seagulls using these little beak tweezers – to complete food orders. The orders are all worth different amounts of points, and some items are harder to grab than others! You can even steal food from the other players… It’s a feeding frenzy!

Lewis: It’s a dexterity game, and we didn’t have a dexterity game in the line. We’ve had it on our wishlist for a while and this one fit the bill … Quite literally. It creates a lot of noise and excitement – and lends itself well to social-media sharing. The response from our retailers is great.

Now, sticking with birds, talk me through this next new launch – Wingin’ It.
Benji: Yes! This comes from inventors Ken Gruhl and Jeremy Posner. They described it as “Push-your-luck meets ‘holy cow, I want to smash that button!’” It’s partly inspired by that nineties craze, Pogs – or Tazos. The game sees you trying to help your chicks fly the nest – in a very extreme way!

On your turn, you take a chick token from one of the three nesting stacks and place it onto the launcher. Then you have a choice… You can whack the button on the launcher to send the tokens flying, or you can add another chick to the launcher… But if you take a token and reveal a chick that’s already on display atop one of the other stacks, you go bust! That means all the tokens you put on the launcher go to the next player…
Who then chooses whether or not to push their luck.

If you do smash the button and send the tokens flying, you get to keep any chicks that land ‘adult side up’. So: the more tokens on the launcher, the better your odds of keeping birds. First to collect four of the same type of bird wins. Oh, and if you flip a magpie token, you can steal a bird from another player.

Nice! What appealed about this one?
Benji: One of the things that appealed was this striking centrepiece. Then the push-your-luck element makes this a perfect family game. And it has this retro nostalgia to the Nineties for those millennials that now have families.

Let’s move onto the beautifully named Bish Bash Bosh.
Louisa: This comes from designer Stephen Wilson – and we loved the name immediately too! We also loved his sizzle video, which showed how much fun people were having with it. It had lovely retro graphics too, and we’ve continued in that vein with our artwork.

It’s a fast-paced card-shedding game. You want be first to get rid of all your cards – but there are some rules around how and when you can shed cards. Each card has a word on… Cards with words ending in ‘ish’ must be followed by cards with words ending in ‘ash’. And a card ending in ‘ash’ must always be followed by an ‘osh’.

Hence, Bish Bash Bosh – it tells you how to play!
Louisa: Exactly! And if you can’t go, you have to draw a card into your hand. And if you make a mistake, you have to pick up cards.

Louisa: There are also coloured cards that let you jump in when it’s not your turn… If you play a ‘Mash’, anyone can follow it with a ‘Mosh’. Then there’s ‘Squish’ and ‘Squash’, which confuses people because ‘Squash’ is actually played as a ‘osh’ because it’s an ‘osh’ sound. When you’re playing at speed, it’s easy to get confused and make mistakes!

Stephen is a relatively new inventor. How important is it for you to be engaging with new talent as well as established pros?
Lewis: Hugely! We’re very reliant on the inventor community to help us with our pipeline of ideas and concepts. The more people we see, the more access we have to good ideas. And Stephen is great – he really spends time thinking about what sorts of concepts are right for Ginger Fox.

Benji: We really value our relationships with inventors and we’re very open. We go to events like the Mojo Pitch, we welcome ideas and we like to get to know our inventors – we’re always keen to build and nurture these relationships.

Louisa: That open communication also helps ensure that inventors have a good understanding of what sort of games we want – as well as what might not be right for us. The better our relationship, the more likely inventors are to think of us when they have great new ideas.

Lewis: A few years ago, we were very seasonal in our approach to working with inventors. What we’ve realised is that we actually need to be open to new ideas all year round. We want to be as clear as possible about our objectives and we want to be as open as possible. We remain very invested in the inventor community.

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