Design Competitions!

This time of year I get all itchy to sharpen some of my prototype designs to enter into design competitions with the hopes of doing well and be noticed by a publisher. The highest boardgame design competition (the Academy award in the business) is held in Germany by the Hippodice club. I entered once a few years ago, but never made it to the next round where you actually send your prototype for them to playtest. This year I entered the rules and picture of Nisse, and it was accepted for playtesting! So now I had to drop $50 to send my complete prototype to Europe for evaluation, but the game looks good. I mounted the game onto a nice folding chipboard surface with my latest modifications and sent it away. They will playtest it for a few months, and they'll invite the best ten or so designs for the finals. Here's hoping!









A more local contest I enter every year is the ION award for the SaltCon copetition in Utah. I sent in my latest version of SPLAT!, this one mounted on thick chipboard that was a pain to cut, but I like the final look. I am hoping this will live up to its billing as Caleb told me in a dream that this was an "award-winning design."

Gaming Session: Dreams of Splat!

So this week my son Caleb came to me in a dream and said, "Dad, I have an award-winning design" and proceeded to explain a game concept to me. The game was about a board with paths, and some type of hunter moved along the paths eliminating subjects. When I awoke the concept quickly evolved to a person stomping around a room killing cockroaches, and Splat! was born. I made the game in about a day and actually playtested it tonight for game night. A variable tile set-up created pathways with nodes for the cockroaches to follow, and every player had a number of cockroaches. The hunter, or "big shoe" was played by each player on a rotating basis, and each player would play a card from 1-5 each turn representing the number of movement spaces they could move the shoe or their cockroaches. You got a point for each cockroach you smashed and collected, and you get points for how many of your cockroaches survive. I haven't got the end game completely figured out, but there is a ball that can be kicked by the shoe to also turn over some cockroaches to make them easy prey. It was kind of fun to play it, we'll see where it goes.

We also played Tobago tonight, that game is never a bad time. I finally played some of the reverse side boards which made for an even better experience. I would say that Tobago is easily in my top 25, it has strategy, replay value, is not long nor difficult to learn. And you make really cool grinding noises whenever you rotate the idols on the island.