Few months ago I went to SPIEL ’16 [web] in Essen; the biggest board game fair in the world. Ever since I’ve been obsessed with a new game I discovered there, Happy Salmon [BGG].
It’s one of the fastest games I’ve ever seen. One can explain it in one minute and play it in the next. Considering it only takes two minutes, it brings a huge amount of joy and instant gratification, making it my default energizer in workshops, trainings and other sessions now.
Before you start a game both the name and the package already bring joy to the table. Happy Salmon comes in a fish-shaped container as you can see above. Once I explain the Happy Salmon move, people really start cracking up. But no time to lose, the more fanatic you play, the sooner you’re fin-ished! It’s a huge hit with fellow coaches as well as the company I introduced it at, so the eight packages I bought at SPIEL are already running short. I can tell you there’s little as much rewarding as seeing colleagues at your current client greet each other with the Happy-Salmon-signature-move, haha.
Happy Salmon will surely be in my backpack when I give a workshop or visit an event next time. For more ideas to put the fun in functional take a peek at My toolbox [blog]. Below you can see Happy Salmon being scaled to over 20 people.
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Dec 30, 2016 at 21:13
Guess I know one of the games I will learn at p4a 🙂
Jan 2, 2017 at 16:24
Heard Eddy brought the game to Agile Testing Days indeed. 🙂 Went to SPIEL with him, so he also was an instant fan!
Jan 2, 2017 at 19:05
Yeah but I missed out on playing it with him; so guess I have to settle for you 😀
Mar 27, 2017 at 15:20
Thorough review of Happy Salmon. By thorough I mean you could play four rounds with sorting in between, but it really discusses all aspects of the game, including user comments near the end!
https://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/1740714/enders-comprehensive-pictorial-overview-most-fun-y
Jul 23, 2019 at 19:56
Hey Jordan, we did the same for an energyzer in an agility training : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ujIqVxN7PI in french