Santa Rosa Junior College art instructor Michael McGinnis received the Game of the Year Award, a national accolade given to most outstanding toy design.

McGinnis won the award for his ‘Perplexus Epic’ at the Toy of the Year Awards on Feb. 9.

“I did not expect to win,” McGinnis said, who found out about the award through a phone call from James Packer, the game’s manufacturer. McGinnis could not attend the awards held in New York because he didn’t want to miss any classes.

Perplexus Epic won the award, but the Perplexus game line includes Perplexus Original, Rookie and Twist.

Perplexus is a transparent ball that holds a marble within a series of tracks and barriers that form a complex maze. The goal of the game is to get the marble through all the barriers without the ball falling off course.

According to the Perplexus website, Epic has 125 barriers and is the most difficult to play. Perplexus requires good hand-eye coordination, concentration and patience.

“The thing is complex from the beginning. However, it’s easy to understand what the goal is. So when somebody picks this up they say ‘Oh, I can get from beginning to end. It’s straightforward.’ But the process is not straightforward,” McGinnis said.

Creating the 3-D maze game took many years and several attempts. “I think of these as sort of a metaphor for how life goes, and if you choose to keep getting back on the pathway, you grow,” McGinnis said.

The concept for the Perplexus started when McGinnis took an art class at Casa Grande High School. According to the Perplexus website, McGinnis was instructed to create a board game for the class and came up with the ‘Equilibre Hable’, pieces of wood glued together to form a maze and a BB pellet, all inside a plastic cube.

At SRJC, sculpting instructor John Watrous influenced McGinnis. He said that Watrous’ class was his most important class. “He encouraged me to be creative in everything, and I think that’s why I feel so free to do this,” McGinnis said.

McGinnis is glad he won the award because it brings attention to the Perplexus toys, but he’ll keep working. “I’m doing more, this is a continuous process,” he said.