BGDF contest, again

Just got done reading through the BGDF contest entries for August and casting my votes.  Neat stuff - there are a number of them with very clever design components - mechanics, board layouts, theme ideas, etc.  No idea how I'll do.  To me, it seemed like a few of them suffered from the typical problem in this competition where the games just aren't fleshed out enough in 800 words to get a sense of how they go, or they invoke big decks of cards that you have to imagine would be carefully tested and full of cool stuff.  But others are just neat-o.

A couple also seemed not to honor the restrictions put on entries this time around, which were that you had to have shared components and two separate unique paths to victory.  For a couple of the games (in one case, one that I really liked otherwise) they seem to have ignored this completely; for others, they're technically honored, I guess, but not really in spirit (the two victors get there the same way, by following the same goals, for example).  There's not really any way to police this, other than to hope the voters see it too, but I guess it's not that big a deal for something with no real prize that you're doing for fun.

August BGDF entries up

That was fast.  Eight of them, ranging from a new card game with a standard deck of cards to a couple with over 240 pieces.  Lots of artwork in these entries - more than usual, and more complete.  Because of the restrictions, the rules are pretty complex - I need to sit down with a monster Diet Mountain Dew and wade through them all before voting.

Which is soon this time - midnight on August 30.  Exciting.  I hope more people give comments and reviews than last time - that was kind of disappointing, since only I and one other guy did.

August BGDF contest entry in

I got my entry in for the August BGDF showdown.  I think it's a good one.  The problem is, I had to rush at the end, and I never got a chance to playtest it.  I think it would work OK, but I didn't have time to find four people to give it a try.

Might get that chance this weekend.  Anyway, we'll see what everybody else did within the restrictions.

New BGDF showdown is a doozy

Lots of conditions for the BGDF design showdown this month - shared resources, at least four players, and two people have to win simultaneously.  I'm at a loss for now, but hopefully something will occur to me.

Yoggity help cards

I ordered copies of Yoggity for the Rio Grande competition today.  I added some informational cards - I hope they help the players at the Memphis GameCon understand the game more quickly.  TGC has shifted their card sheets to 18 cards, so I had some extra cards available for free thanks to the reformat, so luckily I get more cards for the same price.

Images are below - many games now have this kind of thing, and I think it sums up what you're supposed to do pretty well.  People will still have to consult the rules for the details, but hopefully this will help the learning curve. I'm probably going to do it for Diggity, too.  These images include a margin on the edge that would be cut off in printing, so there's not as much blue as it seems.

Sandcastles rules

The rules to my entry for the BGDF contest are here.  Pictures, too.  It shares some elements with Diggity what with the map building, but I think it would play completely differently.  I might have to make up cards and test it to see.

Sandcastles wins!

My entry in the July BGDF showdown won!  Yippee.  I had fun thinking this one up.  I went with simultaneous movement for one phase the game - not sure how that would actually work, but I give the players something complicated to do with a common set of resources to draw from, so I think it would be fun to play.  It might be like Set, though, where I've found that natural ability is a big factor - it can be hard to enjoy a game where the emphasis is on a skill you just don't have.

I'm really enjoying these contests.  I've entered four times now, and won three of them, so that's gratifying - the games are always creative, and it keeps me active thinking up a new game each week.  And condensing the rules into 800 words is good practice!

July BGDF entries up

The entries for the July BGDF Design Showdown are up here.  Voting ends soon.  Only five entries this time, and they took a variety of different paths with the wide-open topic choice.  Some interesting ones in there.  I'll reveal mine next week when the voting is done (it's supposed to be anonymous).

BGDF contest - entry in!

Got my entry in for the BGDF contest this month.  I spent about four hours on it this afternoon, plus another one last night before bed.  Fun stuff, but it's really hard to get a good set of rules in under 800 words.

We'll see how I do - I didn't print it out and playtest it this time, but I don't think most folks do, so hopefully I've managed to imagine most of the potential problems and avoid them.

BGDF July contest

The new BGDF Design Showdown for July is up, and it's much less restrictive than previous ones.  You need to have some theme related to summertime, and you need to have "time as a resource."  I'm not sure what that last bit means, but I'll try.  I noodled over a good idea last night before falling asleep, and I sketched it out on paper while waiting for my daughter's band concert tonight - hopefully it'll work.

Even more contests

The forces behind Protospiel have announced a game design contest.  It's described here.  While this is exciting, and Diggity might be eligible if I don't publish it beforehand, the prize doesn't seem like it's worth the trouble.

If you win, you get your game "published."  I put this in quotes, because:

1. The print run is pretty small (500 copies)
2. You don't actually get paid for the game, since all proceeds go to the publisher, other than 24 free copies to you.

The free copies aren't nothing, but they're not much.  You could try selling them yourself, but you'd be competing with the actual publishers of your game, which might limit your ability to sell them.

Furthermore, in order to enter, you need to pay $5 and submit three copies of your game that you don't get back.  Assuming you'll spend some money producing the copies, you're actually out something like $50-$60 to enter after printing and shipping (assuming you use something like TheGameCrafter.com to produce your copies).  All for a shot (and possibly a small one) at a net 21 copies (24 minus 3) of your game and no cash reward.

Still, winning is fun, and winning could lead to publication elsewhere, or reputation-building.  I'm just not sure the return-over-investment makes it worth it.

Another contest

Trask over at LivingDice.com reports on a new contest sponsored by Blue Panther LLC.  I haven't been able to find the press release or any other information at Blue Panther's website, but from what Living Dice reports, they're looking for multi-component games that are short (30 minutes or less) and make use of some of the different components Blue Panther can produce (mostly custom dice and wood products, but also cards).

The winner gets published; the runner-up gets a game prototype realized by Blue Panther.  They don't say what the terms are (e.g. royalty, number produced, etc.) for the winner - maybe that will come in a future posting.  The contest has a relatively short time horizon - entries due by August 10, winners announced by August 31.

I'm not sure if Blue Panther pre-prints a large run of their games, or whether they do something closer to print-on-demand with their products.  It looks like they're pretty well set up to do POD, although the cards might be tricky to do that way, since there's generally such an economy of scale with printing.

Interesting stuff - I'll look for more info.

Update:  Here's Blue Panther's original announcement.

Gentoo Rules

This was my entry (the winning entry) for the June BGDF game design showdown. The contest required a deck building component and also a slippery slope component, where a player who was ahead might tend to stay ahead.
(c) 2010 by Dave Dobson

Gentoo

A game of penguin procreation

Components:

• 12 Nesting Stone tokens 
• 20 Penguin tokens 
• 90 Gentoo cards 
• 20 Fish tokens

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Object:

Hatch as many new penguins as you can.

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Setup:

1.    Place six Snow cards in a Player Pile in front of each player. Any extra Snow cards will not be used.

2.    Shuffle the rest of the Gentoo cards. Flip the top four face up in the center of the table. These are the Choice Cards.

3.    Place the rest of the cards face down in a stack in the center of the table. This is the Draw Pile.

4.    Place the Penguin Tokens next to the Draw Pile.

5.    Each player flips their top three cards and places them in a row. These are the player’s Cards In Play. They will all be Snow cards at the start.

6.    Give each player three Nesting Stones.

7.    Give each player five Fish Tokens. These are used to pay for Choice Cards.

8.    The player who has been closest to the South Pole goes first.

Game Play:

Each player’s turn has two phases:

Phase I: Common Area

1.    Draw – flip the top card from the Draw Pile and add it to the Choice Cards in the center of the table. There should now be five cards there. If you run out of cards in the Draw Pile, shuffle the Discard Pile and use it as the new Draw Pile.

2.    Choose – You may choose one of the Choice Cards to add to your hand. Take the Choice Card and add it to your Used Pile next to her Cards in Play. You may not use this card this turn, but it will come into play later when the Used Pile is shuffled and turned into the Player Pile. Some cards have a cost shown as fish icons on the card. If so, you must pay the required number of fish tokens to choose the card. Eggs - The player may only choose an Egg Card if he or she has the required number of Nesting Stones indicated on the card.

3.    Discard – If there are more than four Choice Cards showing, pick one to discard. Move it to the Discard Pile.

Phase II: Personal Area

1.    Flip – flip the top card of your Player Pile and add it to your Cards in Play. If you have no more cards in your Player Pile, shuffle your Used pile to use as your new Player Pile. When you do this, restore your fish tokens back up to five tokens.

2.    Play – you may play any one of your Cards in Play. Choose a Card in Play, places it on the Discard Pile, and follows the instructions on the card. Hatching an Egg – you may hatch an egg only when you have both an Egg card and a Hatch card showing in your Cards in Play. Turn both of them in and collect a Penguin token. When you hatch an egg, you must give one of your nesting stones to another player. If you have no nesting stones, you can still hatch your egg.

3.    Move to Used – If you cannot or choose not to play a card, then if you have more than three Cards in Play, choose one of them and move it to the Used pile.

After these two phases, play proceeds to the next player.

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Winning the Game:

The first player to collect five penguin tokens wins the game.

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Cards:

·         Snow – Cannot be played. You may move it to your Used pile if you have more than three Cards in Play.

·         Egg – combine with Hatch to produce a penguin. Each Egg shows the nesting stones (3, 4, or 5) required to collect.

·         Skua (1 fish) – discard any Egg currently visible on the table (Cards in Play, Choice Cards, or atop a player’s Used Pile).

·         Stone Thief (1 fish) – take a Nesting Stone from any other player.

·         Good Nesting Site (1 fish) – reduces the number of nesting stones required to take an Egg by one. Discard when Egg is collected. Does not count as your played card. Limit one per Egg.

·         Hatch (1 fish) – Use to collect a penguin. Requires an Egg in play.

·         Leopard Seal (2 fish) – force another player to lose one penguin token.

·         Vicious Peck (1 fish) – blocks a Stone Thief card; you play this card out-of-turn to keep from losing your stone.

·         Confusing Blizzard – Reverse direction of play

·         Gone Fishing – The next player loses a turn

·         Thaw – if you have a Snow card in play, melt it. Discard both the Thaw and the Snow cards.

June BGDF Challenge Results

Looks like my entry, Gentoo, narrowly won the June BGDF design competition. Woohoo! This is the third month I've participated, and I've enjoyed it each time. This was certainly the biggest field of competitors - 11 entries and lots of good ideas.

This is my first entry that I actually printed out and playtested, which was fun. It worked pretty well after some iterations and rule changes. I think the requirements of the contest hurt the game a little bit, since I was required to include some elements that I'd otherwise avoid.
I'll get the rules up soon and comment some more.

BGDF design contest thoughts

Just finished reading and critiquing the BGDF entries for June.  Some good ones there.  And some not-so-good.

I've been enjoying this a lot.  This is my third time participating, and I've looked at some of the previous months too. The contest is an interesting mix; the entries seem to come in a few basic archetypes.  Here are some examples:

• Complete and Clever - a couple games each month manage to be both fully described and really clever - those are the ones that are the most fun to read.
• A Million Pieces and a Sliderule - a lot of the designs are just fabulously, needlessly complex, with eight kinds of resources, six different decks of cards, a board, and rules that require counting all these pieces and producing amortizations to determine income.  OK, not that bad, but some are close.
• Just Add The Actual Game - The desinger lays out a set of game mechanics in broad strokes, invokes a huge imaginary deck of cards or pieces each with individualized parameters, costs, and special powers, and then never tells you what any of those cards or pieces actually do or say.
• Huh? - often the rules are internally inconsistent, refer to parts not in evidence, or directly contradictory.  Or, they just don't make sense, like the words don't make sentences that you can understand.

Some of this comes from the very low 800-word limit from the rules - I've hit it nearly every time and had to cut out what I thought was vital stuff.  It's great practice for streamlining rules, but I think maybe 1000 words would let you define the concept just a little better.

I would have thought that there would be more entries that were near-direct copies of existing games or mechanics, but that's not actually so common - the contestants seem to think (probably rightly so) that voters will place a special emphasis on originality.  Even if they can't write comprehensible rules, they avoid a direct rip-off of an existing mechanic, which is interesting.

Eleven entries!

The June BGDF design showdown received 11 entries!  I'm not sure why it was so popular this time - maybe because some versions of the theme (deck building) could lead to a CCG-style game, and I hear those are popular.  This leads to two concerns - one is that I'll have stiff competition; the other is that I now have to do a critique of ten other games to assign my votes!  That could take a while.

Dixit wins

Looks like Dixit won the prestigious Spiel des Jahres prize at Essen. I reviewed it here.  I certainly wouldn't have thought of it as a best game from a design point of view. The game works well; the concept is intriguing, and it's fun.  I wonder what criteria they were going on. Measured from some angles (graphic design, quirkiness), the game is clearly exemplary.  The art is just really, really cool, and you get to think in a fun, metaphorical way while playing. From a game design perspective, it's very much like Dictionary or Apples to Apples, although with a few twists. There's not much there, although it's fun.  I think Apples to Apples and Dictionary might have more replay value, although it depends on the audience.

Anyway, a good game.

June BGDF Showdown entry in place

I finished my June BGDF Game Design Showdown entry today - I think it's a good one, but it was a tricky assignment this time out - the theme wasn't specified, but the mechanics and structure were quite closely regulated.  We'll see what the voters think; it's hard to predict how the voting will go and how the other entries will look.

I'll let y'all know which one mine is when the voting is done.

June BGDF Challenge

I guess I was going to run into Dominion sooner or later.  The June BGDF game design showdown is up, and it relies on Dominion's deck-building mechanic pretty heavily.  I haven't played Dominion, but my impression is that you've got a limited number of resources which you spend to buy cards; some cards give you more resources or moves or abilities, other cards give you points.  So, it's a tradeoff between stuff that will help you play and stuff that will help you win.  Sounds interesting.

The other part of the challenge is that they want a slippery slope feel.  This is where getting ahead gets you further ahead, and getting behind gets you further behind, or, in other words, a positive feedback loop.  This kind of thing has a tendency to end games fast and/or make them pointless to finish, but part of the challenge is to have a slippery slope tendency but not to have it ruin the game.

This is going to be hard to do, and hard to judge, since the rules submitted for these things are usually incomplete, making it hard to imagine the final game.  Since game balance is key here, and since that usually comes from iterative playtesting and tweaking rather than from rules, it's going to be tricky.

I'll see what I can do.

Second place

Close but no cigar in the May BGDF Design Showdown (I tied for second).  These competitions are tough - the rules are often restrictive, and the voting is hard to do.  This month, there were a number of creative entries, but with the 800-word limit on the rules, and the absence of real components, it's tricky sometimes to imagine how the games will actually play out. Also, a lot of the design (in the form of art, decks of cards, etc.) can be left to the imagination.  When you're voting, you end up sometimes deciding between a well-specified game that seems OK or a game that could be really great if the parts and rules that are not specified are done well.

Tricky.  But a fun contest - my congrats to Simon Stump, the winner this month, and my thanks to Seth Jaffee for running it.