HL Games Limited - About Us

When we started this business in 2003, we wrote the About Us you can see at the bottom of the page. We still post it here, as it makes us laugh (we are easily amused) and reminds us not to take ourselves too seriously. Several years on, and ten thousand lessons later, having beaten almost all the odds facing small businesses at their inception (we do have wrinkles, and the sleepless nights have taken their toll in grey and girth), we remain easily amused. We still try not to take ourselves too seriously, but we do take our business very seriously. With that in mind, we’ve decided to tell you a bit more About Us, seriously.

We could write that we played games weekly with our families since before we could walk, but that would be a lie. We could also say we had a passion for invention and filled the rec room with our creations, but that, too, would be untrue.

In fact, our first game was created in the mid-80’s by two very bored guys sitting in a trading room intent solely on proving how clever they were. Like most folks engaged in self-centered activities, they thought the rest of the world would love it. It didn’t. Simply being clever was simply not enough. Never was, never will be.

Feasting regularly on humble pie, our two very clever blokes recrafted their ideas over more than a decade (come on, not every day on the trading floor was boring – some days there was other work to do!). What began as 2 guys with ideas in the mid-80’s, became 2 families with a vision by the late-90’s. The ideas became GO mental®, produced in a small test run in 1997, and now the award-winning flagship of our product range. The vision became HL Games, formed on April Fools Day 2003.

Since then, we’ve worked very hard to bring you quality games that teach without trying, that educate while entertaining so you can learn while laughing. (We've also been afflicted with an awful addiction to alliteration.) We’ve tried to make infectious our love of knowledge, our passion for challenge and our fervent belief that competition in a healthy social setting engenders a tolerance for human foibles that will withstand the most bigoted ignorance and cure it with healthy doses of informed and objective thought. Oh, and underpinning the lofty ideals, was the requirement that our games also be plain, old FUN!

Along the way, we’ve listened carefully to your ideas and our games are much the better for them. There’s more to come, and it all depends on you – what you tell us about your wants and your needs and your visions for quality play in a world plagued by mediocrity and reproduction. You are what makes HL Games. If we get this right, there will not be much more to say About Us and a whole big bunch to say About You!

So, in the end, maybe the light-hearted jokes below about making the world a better place weren’t so light-hearted after all. Maybe, just like this business, they were very serious indeed. And maybe, with your help, we’ll succeed!

Evolve a little!

Graeme & Catherine

So, anyway, there we all were, just sitting around one day, when Graeme (he’s the thin one) said, “you know, what the world really needs in these troubled times is another board games company”.

Andrew (he’s the tall one) stared in disbelief. “You’re absolutely right!” he exclaimed, slapping his forehead, “it’s so simple it’s brilliant.”

Catherine (the American one) leapt to her feet. “That’ll solve everything” she announced. “Nuclear proliferation, third world debt, depletion of the ozone layer.”

The other Catherine (the other tall one) began pacing excitedly. “Wars, famine, disease” she began, ticking each one off on her fingers, “telephone sales reps, those irritating commercials where you can’t work out what it is they’re selling...”

“But,” Graeme interjected, “if this board game company is ever going to achieve world peace and global harmony it’ll need to be a bit different. It’ll need to be better. It’ll need to be brighter. It’ll need to be stylish. It’ll need to be smart. It’ll need to be a whole bunch of other things beginning with either b or s.”

And so we set to work, and after twenty minutes or so of scribbling on bits of paper, reshaping old corn flakes boxes, and wearing out our children’s coloring crayons, the whole thing was done.

Or, at least, it was something like that.

Thus it was that HL Games was born. We haven’t quite cracked the world peace/telephone sales rep thing yet, but we’re working on it. In the meantime, we hope you’ll like our games and that you’ll contribute to the betterment of mankind by buying several copies.

HL Games Limited is a UK-registered company operating under the laws of England (Company Number 04718141). HL Games USA Limited is a subsidiary of the UK company, incorporated in Illinois