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Design a Giant Game, and Win Publication

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lucasAB
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German retailer Spielmaterial.de, which sells pawns, tokens, gameboards and other game-related material, has purchased a large quantity of game components from the 1999 Kosmos release Giganten and is now holding a game design competition to find new ways to use these bits. A proposed design can add other materials such as cards and gameboards, but it must use all of most of the bits from Giganten. Top rated proposals, as judged by the local gaming club in Mönchengladbach, Germany, will receive store credit, while the best submission will receive an offer to publish the game.

You can pick up a sample pack of the components at the Spielmaterial.de booth (9-33) at Spiel 08, or you can request a copy by mail for a shipping charge fee. Details of the competition, as well as a picture of the components, are available on the Spielmaterial.de website.

Courtesy of boargamenews.com

coco
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Thank you

Thank you, LucasAB!

Néstor

Lucas.Castro
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Materials

Is anyone else a bit confused about their description of materials? They say:

"The set contains 4x4 cars with cargo
area (e.g. for game bits 10x10 mm),
4x4 oil rigs, 4x4 + 1 trains, 3 oil
drums, 60 plastic pieces – all in one
bag."

I have the following issues:
- The picture shows 5 oil-rigs (x4 colours)
- The math does not add up to 60 pieces.
- Does each player have +1 trains? Does each have 3 oil drums?

Lucas.

lucasAB
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I think

I think they mean each player gets 5 oil rigs(in four colors), 4 cars in four colors, 3+ oil barrles, and 4 trains in 4 colors, not to forget 1+ black trains. This would add up to 56, so maybe there are extra black pieces.

Lucas

InvisibleJon
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Lucas.Castro wrote:Is anyone

Lucas.Castro wrote:
Is anyone else a bit confused about their description of materials?
I was. I recommend checking out the pictures of the game on Board Game Geek. There are a few bits there that I wasn't aware of 'till I looked at the pictures.

One of the Giganten pictures from BGG: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/130840?size=large

Gogolski
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I'll get a sample pack

I'll get a sample pack tomorrow at their booth in Essen and will post what's in it.

Cheese!

MatthewF
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Perfect, thanks!

Perfect, thanks!

Dralius
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I have a set of rules

I have a set of rules downloaded from BGG and the plastic that comes with the game is

4 trucks (one each of 4 colors)
20 oilrigs (5 each of 4 colors)
5 locomotives (one each of the 4 colors)+black
3 oil barrel price markers
60 crude oil markers

BTW the crude oil markers stack and the rigs can be placed atop them.

I'm hoping that one of my gaming group that is now at the show will be able to pick me up a parts pack. I don't want to spend the 6 Euros (Im cheap) to have them mailed to me. I could do without it and just borrow the game from a friend but i want the parts. There is a better then fair chance I won’t make the deadline anyhow.

Brett Myers
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Anyone know how to order the

Anyone know how to order the packs? Is it through their webstore? I didn't see them at first glance..

dannorder
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Special offers

Hi Brett,

Their online store lists "Game pieces Giants" in the Special Offers section at a price that looks like it'll come out to the price quoted on the competition page once you add shipping.

The site looks like it's worth browsing for other pieces too, though I don't know the conversion from Euros offhand or what the shipping costs would be.

lucasAB
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Euro to dollar

Converting the Euro to dollar is "fairly" easy. Usually the dollar is double the price of a euro, so one euro would be two dollars, so it's about 9 bucks to ship the components to the USA. I wish someone would be a pack up for me at Essen, although I doubt it... oh well.

Gogolski
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I got a pack at Essen and it

I got a pack at Essen and it is exactly as Dralius described.

Cheese.

Lucas.Castro
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Shipping and Prototyping

Oh man! I did not realise that shipping a prototype to Germany would be so expensive. But I feel that I do not have a choice, since my game will have ~200 cards (which I would not expect people to cut-out themselves), amongst a number of other components. Is anyone else worrying about this (I am not quite done either!) I am planning on sending files by email before the deadline to officially make it, even if my prototype will not arrive on time.

On a related note, I am concerned about the cost of my game (and about having that taken as a factor against my submission), and would not mind people’s opinion on how much a game with the following components would cost:
- All the plastic components cited above
- About 200 cards (quite small ones, about 2.5” by 2”)
- A quad-fold board (20” by 20” when opened)
- Another small board (about 10” by 8”)
- About 80 cardboard tokens

The game is for 2-4 players, and take 80-120 minutes to play (double that for your first game or two, but I personally find that to be true with most new games I play).

How much would people pay for a game of that size and length? Does 30-40 Euros sound fine, if the game is good?

[/anxious ranting]

awakener76
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Not sure whether to send mine

I have a game designed, and have done some play testing, but I'm not quite happy with it. It's very close I think, but not quite there. With the deadline rapidly approaching I'm going to have to make a tough decision on whether to send it or not.

Lucas.Castro
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Some Thoughts

I completely understand where you are coming from. I could really use an extra month of playtesting, but mainly for tweaking and for balancing the four factions in my game.

However, my instinctive advice for you would be to send it in, for two reasons:
1) The worst that can happen is rejection. But more importantly...
2) The game is probably very much geared for the pieces that were assigned to the competition.

If reason 2 is not the case, then you may want to perfect the game and send it to a different publisher (probably with some minor changes regarding the pieces). But if, like me, # 2 is very much true for you, then you would probably require a major redesign to even pitch this to another publisher anyhow.

Best of luck either way!

As a side note, I will be dying to know what kind of themes people used for their design. I originally went with the obvious idea of keeping to a similar theme as the original game. But the gameplay I came up with was completely missing the "fun factor" (in part because of a lack of tension).

So I redesigned completely, and went with a post-apocalyptic world where most vegetation was wiped-out by a man-made plague (deployed in all major water supplies of the world). Players each control one of four factions (each with a unique character and special ability), which are trying to build a new life (or rebuild in the form of the pre-plague world). It has kind of a Mad Max feel.

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