Does anyone have any experience entering Hippodice? Do alot of people plan on entering this year? How nice do they expect the prototypes to be?
Hippodice
Thu, 10/07/2004 - 09:37
Thu, 10/07/2004 - 09:47
#1
Re: Hippodice
fanaka66 wrote:
Does anyone have any experience entering Hippodice?
Yes, I do.
Quote:
Do alot of people plan on entering this year?
I plan on entering the competition again this year, possibly with 2 games.
Quote:
How nice do they expect the prototypes to be?
Prototypes have to be complete and playable, those are the most important requirements. Make your prototype as nice looking as you can, it doesn't hurt to make the jury want to play your game, but you don't have to spend a ton of time and money on a professional looking prototype.
- René Wiersma
Thu, 10/07/2004 - 10:06
#2
Hippodice
Does anyone have any information that can be posted in the Game Design Contests area of Web Resources?
I think there has been a number of contests that have not made it into this area of the site, such as Hippodice (but I honestly know nothing about this contest, never looked into it).
EDIT :
Nevermind the info is right on the home site, I never enter the site that way, so bad of me!
I guess if someone could move this to the Web Resource/Game Design Contest area is would at least help down the road.
Thu, 10/07/2004 - 10:14
#3
Hippodice
All the information can be found on the Hippodice site: http://www.hippodice.de. Look under "HippoAWB". There's an English version of the rules in PDF format.
In my opinion, the Hippodice competition is the competition for game designers of the "German" school. It's a very good opportunity to get noticed by publishers, if your game does well, of course.
- René Wiersma
Thu, 10/07/2004 - 10:30
#4
Hippodice
zaiga wrote:
...In my opinion, the Hippodice competition is the competition for game designers of the "German" school.
After hearing about it (once I joined this site) I would agree, I guess that is why I think the Web Resources area should contain a link in the Game Design Contests area.
Thu, 10/07/2004 - 13:47
#5
Hippodice
Please submit it, and I will happily approve it, and poof, it will be in web resources!
-- Matthew
Thu, 10/07/2004 - 13:56
#6
Hippodice
I did submit something earlier, should be there waiting! If not let me know and I will toss something together again.
Thu, 10/07/2004 - 16:01
#7
Hippodice
Back to the topic of Hippodice....
Who is thinking about submitting this year?
Thu, 10/07/2004 - 16:31
#8
Hippodice
Yes, I'll be submitting something this year (probably two goes again.)
I reckon I've learnt quite a lot since last year but I'll be happy to get either of them into the second round again.
Thu, 10/07/2004 - 16:37
#9
Hippodice
I am... been working on the game alot recently. Don't know if it is "German" enough to make the cut though. I am more excited about this game than any of the others I have made so far. After last years poor choice for entry, I know what kind of game to submit this time.
Rob
Thu, 10/07/2004 - 16:45
#10
Hippodice
So my question to you Scurra and Prophx,
What is it that you learned?
Can you shed some light on the contest for the rest of us?
I am really interested in entering this year. If I can get my current in progress game "completed", I will. But I would love to gain insight in to the contest, if you are willing to enlighten me.
Thu, 10/07/2004 - 17:21
#11
Hippodice
I plan on entering a game as well - I had to do some quick blind-playtesting since I hadn't got around to that yet, but I should be able to make it in time. It seems like they purposely don't tell you what kind of games to submit (so they can get a wide range of them), but I'm thinking the same criteria as SdJ applies - a high fun/complexity factor (which is most easily achieved with a simple game).
I would also be interested in knowing anyone's experience, i.e. what kind of things get approved for testing, and which don't.
Stefan
Thu, 10/07/2004 - 17:30
#12
Hippodice
I'll be submitting as well, though I need to come up with a good 3-player variant.
Thu, 10/07/2004 - 17:45
#14
Hippodice
I am still deciding what to submit, but plan on submitting a game as well. Good luck to all that enter!
-Steve
Thu, 10/07/2004 - 17:53
#15
Hippodice
I heard in 2002 they had around 250 submissions. Anyone know what the number was last year? Just trying to get an estimate of this year's number.
Thu, 10/07/2004 - 17:55
#16
Hippodice
Yeah - I'd say that the "fun" factor is mostly what they are looking for; remember this is a fairly typical games club - not a games publisher - so they don't necessarily want to play long, intricate games in a format like this where they are playing 50 new games in the space of a few months.
So my guess is that a ruleset longer than a couple of pages is unlikely to make the initial cut, and you need to figure out how to "sell" your game in the first instance - tell them why they should look at your design. So don't submit something that will require half-an-hour to setup or has hundreds of components. Oh, and always include examples of play along with your rules.
For the record, afterwards you get quite a useful feedback form which reads a bit like a report card from school, assessing your game on things like luck/skill, complexity, rules clarity, game length and so on. I scored well on the technical side but failed on the tricky subjective "fun" factor. You've all seen "Fire and Ice" now, which was one of my games last year, and it's fair to say that I didn't expect to progress with that one (they accurately called it as "dry" and somewhat cerebral.) My other entry was much more suited to the format but needed some more development work and they could tell :-)
Thu, 10/07/2004 - 22:49
#17
Hippodice
I'm planning to submit two designs, one of which is Ultra Violets, which I've been slowly tinkering and changing. I'll have to post a playtest update and the new rules, it's getting smoother and is much improved because of the GDW. Too much work and not enough game design lately. I have some other ideas for themes now, but I want to see how far it can make it on its own merits. Anycase, it's getting to a point where I enjoy playing it instead of seeing all the faults each playtest.
Good luck to everyone submitting,
Mark
Fri, 10/08/2004 - 10:36
#18
Hippodice
Scurra wrote:
Yeah - I'd say that the "fun" factor is mostly what they are looking for; remember this is a fairly typical games club - not a games publisher - so they don't necessarily want to play long, intricate games in a format like this where they are playing 50 new games in the space of a few months.
So my guess is that a ruleset longer than a couple of pages is unlikely to make the initial cut, and you need to figure out how to "sell" your game in the first instance - tell them why they should look at your design. So don't submit something that will require half-an-hour to setup or has hundreds of components. Oh, and always include examples of play along with your rules.
For the record, afterwards you get quite a useful feedback form which reads a bit like a report card from school, assessing your game on things like luck/skill, complexity, rules clarity, game length and so on. I scored well on the technical side but failed on the tricky subjective "fun" factor.
Hi, Scurra
Well, I am not sure about the first part of what you surmise above - last year my game Pharaoh's Heir was a finalist and the rules (including play examples) run to 10 pages (double column, 12 font, arial). I do agree that submitting an overly-complex component-heavy game that takes over 2 hours to play is unlikely to make the second round.
I was very interested to read you received 'report cards' for your entries - I didn't get one, but maybe they don't send them out to finalists? And you only get a report card if your game makes the playtest round, right?
Good luck with your submission(s) this year.
Phillip
PS Is there any way to move this discussion over to the larger, more comprehensive Hippodice thread?
Fri, 10/08/2004 - 11:23
#19
Hippodice
benedict wrote:
I was very interested to read you received 'report cards' for your entries - I didn't get one, but maybe they don't send them out to finalists?
Maybe they figured that you obviously didn't need to be told about any problems with your game since there weren't any? ;-)
Quote:
And you only get a report card if your game makes the playtest round, right?
That would be my guess, yeah.
Oh and I can appreciate what you say about length: of rules; two other people I know submitted essentially one-page games and didn't make it. Incidentally, did your submission mention the piece-pack prize? Or did you submit it before you won that?
Fri, 10/08/2004 - 11:56
#20
Hippodice
Hi, David
Pharaoh's Heir won the 4th piecepack contest in August 2003. Some friends suggested that it was much more of a German game that would benefit from nice components and encouraged me to submit the rules to Hippodice (to play with the piecepack you need 2 piecepacks, and quite a few tokens of 2 different types, as well as score sheets - in some ways PH pushed the piecepack limits a bit). I have to say that because of its 2-piecepack requirement I don't think many piecepack enthusiasts have even played the game.
I submitted rules to Hippodice (with some small changes) and was very surprised to ultimately make the final 7. In my description I didn't mention the piecepack win in my submission (although I do when touting the game to publishing companies ;) ), as I didn't think that it broke the rules of having 100 or less prototypes in existence or that it was being considered for publication by a game company at time of submission (for round 2).
Phillip
Well, since you asked...
I'll be submitting "Kyoobz" at the least. I might throw a second to the wolves, but it'll be a stretch.