It's time once again for amateur designers to put their best foot forward, get their stuff together and enter a game in the annual Hippodice game design contest!
Follow the link to the Hippodice webpage and follow directions to enter your game. Feel free to post rules, questions, etc here for last minute critiques! We're a community, and while we'd all like to win the contest, I'm sure many of us would be happy to see anyone from the BGDF with their game in lights. Last year BGDF member Xaqery (Dwight Sullivan) won first place with his entry Noblemen. I've played Noblemen, and I can see why it did so well! Good work Xaq! So who will be this year's winner? Will it be another BGDF member? What game will take the title, and will it get picked up by a big name publisher?
Let's get those games polished - only 25 days to go!
- Seth
Comments
If the game has been
If the game has been published in TGC (thegamecrafter.com) can it participate in hippodice?
What do you think? I guess it is a commercial publication but.... still... ?
TGC publication
I was wondering about that myself. Many contests seem to require "unpublished" status. The distance between making some copies by hand and "publishing" on TGC seems pretty small, but maybe it's an important technical difference.
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PGJ - My game design blog
3rd Place
Hippodice just Emailed me. I got 3rd place for "Midgard Marauders", and am grinning from ear to ear. Thank you for providing this community to support my aspirations.
Yort
Congrats!
Congrats to you and 55cards and anyone else who has entered Hippodice (especially those who's games performed well!)!
Winning Hippodice, or even making that final cut, was always something that I thought would feel great - lend validity to all the time I spend on games, give some affirmation that I'd done a good job...
As yet it's eluded me - in fact I haven't really entered very often - but I love to see members of this community placing well in big contests! I think we've got a lot of talent here, and I look forward to seeing more BGDF games published!
Congrats!
Way to go!
Also 55cards on here also got 2 games listed as finalists!
Way to represent!
Congrats 55Cards
Also 55cards on here also got 2 games listed as finalists!
Way to represent!
Congratulations 55cards on Jukers!
Thanks for noticing me
Thanks for noticing me ;-)
Yep - both games I submitted this year, Jukers! and Archipelago, made it through to the final round, which is pretty neat (last year my submission was given a 'Recommended' tag, which I took as meaning it just missed out on a place amongst the finalists).
Great going Yort on 3rd place - that's a real achievement. Was your prototype picked up for further study by any of the assembled jury? Of my two games, Archipelago (which I always thought was the most 'German') has piqued the interest of two of the jurors, so I am crossing my fingers that one of them eventually see something strong enough in it to publish.
I'm not very a very vocal member of BGDF, but I often check-in here to see what's happening, and it's always interesting to read about how other game designers get inspired and hope to develop their own games.
For the *very* interested, I keep a blog about whatever random game design thoughts enter my head at http://www.brettspiel.co.uk, and this has included a few details on my Hippodice entries.
Yes, Alea/Ravensburger picked
Yes, Alea/Ravensburger picked up my game for review. I received an email today which however wasn't very encouraging. Basically it stated they were going to see if they could work out the flaws because my game didn't work during the tournament. I'm hoping something was lost in translation, because how do you get all the way to third place with a flawed game that doesn't work? He was also a judge, so why would you even bother to take a game that didn't work. They are supposed to contact me in 4-6 weeks.
Hey Yort, I wouldn't be too
Hey Yort,
I wouldn't be too down-beat for a couple of reasons:
1. As you say, they wouldn't have taken the game if they had not been interested. These are people who must see and play hundreds of new games every year, so are probably quite good at seeing potential, even in games which they view as 'flawed'.
2. My experience of Germans (and this is no criticism!) is that they tend to be very blunt and direct in the way they communicate. In some ways this is very refreshing! They tell it like it is but don't mean the criticism to be 'personal'. I would expect any game, in that sense, to have 'flaws', but this does not mean it's broken.
And indeed, I smiled when I read your message since I got a similar email from the publisher who took home Archipelago! He immediately identified two aspects of the game which he felt would need to be removed or changed significantly. In fact he started by saying 'I don't think the game works as it is played now'!! But, he went on to say that he felt there was a 'core' to it that attracted him, and could be developed. I flinched a little when I first read this, but on the second reading I was much more philosophical. He's right - some aspects don't fit the model of what they consider to be a 'family' game, so would need to change before it could be considered commercially, but underneath he thought there was something interesting and (possibly) great and worthwhile.
I'm sure every published game, developed by a big publisher, will undergo big changes as part of that development, and as a designer that (possibly) is hard to take. But I think it's necessary, and great feedback, even if they don't eventually publish. You have, as they say, got to 'kill your babies' to cut through to the really good stuff; and any process that can light the way to creating a better game is worth the hardship.
Anyway - only time will tell for both of us! Good luck!
Funny, my experience is that
Funny, my experience is that Germans 'cushion' their criticism a whole lot, and that Americans are actually a great deal more blunt. Well, maybe it just depends on which person you talk with!
Congrats to everyone who made it to the final round. Great stuff. Go BGDF!
And Archipelago!
And Archipelago!
Wow!
Good News for you!
Excellent and congrats! Hopefully it gets picked up and published as well.
Awesome!
Great job, Yort! Congrats!
-Matt
and now....???
So, we sent in our Applications... but have received no word if they were even received.... still not 100% sure how this is supposed to work. The cutoff was yesterday [Nov 1st] - I get that. But if they need to have the prototype in their hands before Dec 1st, I hope they'll be letting us know soonest. Some of us are on the opposite side of the world. :-)
The other part that makes me crazy is the rules for submission. I quote -
"1. Therefore the application must comprise:
[snip]
• the rules
[snip]
Under no circumstances may the application contain the orginal rules (copy only)"
The Application MUST contain the rules, but then it says under NO CIRCUMSTANCES may the Application CONTAIN the rules... say what?
I went with the bullet point that said the rules MUST be there and hope I'm losing something in translation on the second part.
Anybody out there have experience with this? Am I the only guy worried about messing this up?
It's left over from mail-in submissions
I believe that wording about not wanting the "original rules (copy only)" is left over from the days when most submissions came via physical mail.
They did not want to have the 1-and-only original paper rules ... they wanted to have a *copy* of the rules -- but not be burdened with the risk of possibily losing a unique item.
So, yes ... you want to send along your rules. If you're entering via e-mail then it's already a digital copy, so you're fine.
I think they usually respond within a couple weeks with the results. In the past, I think there's been 2+ weeks to get the prototype to Germany ... of course, I've never had to do it (yet) -- so others here who have gotten in before might have more detailed memories of it.
Good luck with your entry ... and the same to everyone else who submitted.
-Matt
thanks Bryk!
Good luck with your entry ... and the same to everyone else who submitted.
-Matt
Well - that answers that question at least - I won't worry about that any more. Thanks for clearing that up.
I guess we just sit back and wait for the 15th...ish.... :-)
"God bless us, every one!"
Tiny Tim
RYB and Magma
I submitted:
* RYB: http://www.invisible-city.com/play/32/ryb
* Magma: http://www.invisible-city.com/play/527/magma
We'll see what happens...
Jump Gate submitted
I submitted Jump Gate ... wish me luck.
-Matt
Good Luck!
Good Luck with Jump Gate, Bryk... and to everyone else who's entered.
Post the name of your entry here, so we can follow the progress and root for BGDF games!
Sadly, I did not enter anything this year - so help me live vicariously through you!
- Seth
two entries
I submitted two of my older games - I've been designing games for a while now, but it's been more of a hobby than anything else.
But when I was looking at the forum post here for hippodice, one of my friends looked over my shoulder and said - "hey, you should send them something..."
Well, here's hoping - I submitted "Fugo", a samurai war game with cards, and "Scavenger Hunt", a children's math game with a customizable (and ever-changing) board.
Good Luck to all others of you who also submitted -- GO BGDF!!
-Stubert
Bricking It?
I have created the brick flicking game of KingBrick http://kingbrickgame.com/ which i have interest in locally but am having problems getting out to a wider audience, so have decided to submit it to Hippodice.
I'm keeping my flicking fingers crossed!
what will the GODS do next?
Well, I decided to take the plunge, and entered an email application for GODS ALONG THE NILE. Thanks to Matt and Franky for helping resize the documents! Couldn't have done it without you guys!
Dirty dirty cards
Just a tidbit that someone may find useful in the future. As I was shipping my prototype to Germany, I looked at the restrictions placed on sent items in Germany. Most of them seemed reasonable, but then "Used playing cards" caught my eye. I don't know the reasoning behind it, but be careful when sending something to Germany not to mention "cards" specifically in the customs form. Most likely any cards to your prototype will be somewhat used. Yort