Apparently I (a) had a bad link in the GDS thread, and (b) failed to unlock the critiques thread when I tried to...

Both of those errors have been fixed now.

Also, becuase of Gen Con and other basic business, I was late to post this month's and last month's GDS challenges. I fear this may have contributed to low participation, and I apologize for that. You can expect the September GDS to go up on the 1st or 2nd (Thursday or Friday) as per the new schedule!

Thanks,
Seth

August 2011 Game Design Showdown - "Convention Fever"

Please Read: Details on entering the Game Design Showdown.

The August Game Design Showdown is now over! The votes are in!

Not a lot of participation this month - I blame myself for that as I posted it late, and it was right on the tail of last months (which also ran late)... We had 3 entries this month, and only 3 people voted. The winner with 3 votes was SwagCon, by Wil Wade. Congrats Wil!

Shamble-Con by loonoly received 2 votes, and ZombieCon by Benj Hamilton (Yamahako) received 1 vote.

The critique thread is now open.

We at The Game Crafter are pleased to announce our first of many design contests. Each will have a theme, and a short set of rules. After that it's all up to your creativity to see what happens.
There are many different kinds of vehicles in our parts catalog. For our first contest we want you to design a game that features one or more of the vehicle parts in our parts catalog. It doesn't matter whether you feature just one kind of vehicle (like a boat racing game), or if you create a game that requires a whole horde of different vehicles (like a military strategy game). 

July 2011 Game Design Showdown - "Europoly"

Please Read: Details on entering the Game Design Showdown.

Can you redesign a classic?

Voting on the July GDS is TOO CLOSE TO CALL!

After re-opening voting, the new votes were not much more decisive! We had a 4-way tie after Wednesday, and sadly I forgot to bring my tabulation of votes with me to Colorado (where I am now) - so I don't actually know which 2, 3, or 4 are still tied!

Sorry about the inconvenience, I'll open the critique thread so we can talk about the games anyway. For now you can assume you're all winners :)

First of all, I would like to apologize for failing to post a Game Design Showdown on 6/31 before leaving town for 2 weeks. I will be posting the July showdown in a few minutes, and we'll have through next Wednesday (7/20) to submit an entry. Voting will run through the following Wednesday (7/27), and then August's GDS will begin on 8/1.

Sorry for the delay, hopefully you're all itching to participate!

And for those interested, Seattle was beautiful last week, and Protospiel was a lot of fun (and very constructive I think).

- Seth

Folks,

Lego is currently looking for game designers. Check out the details here:
http://jobsatlego.com/dk/billund/product-design_-development/game-design...

Thanks,
Darke

June 2011 Game Design Showdown - "Spring Cleaning"

Please Read: Details on entering the Game Design Showdown.

WINNER ANNOUNCED! 7 games have been posted - and in a very close race we have a winner!

1st place, with 12 votes: Busy Bees by Lokinervio.
2nd place, with 11 votes: Tulpen Mania by Richard James and Brad Phillips.
3rd place, with 8 votes: Diced Veggies by bhazzard.
4th place, with 6 votes: Birds of Pair O' Dice by Loonoly and Spring Planting by Chip Alexandra.
5th place, with 4 votes: Spring into Action by Empires and Springtime for Dinos by Ron Krause

Congrats to the winners, and thanks for playing! Watch for the next GDS to go up Thursday June 30th (I'm leaving town, and want to make sure I post it before I go).

And now, to the Critiques Thread!

AND THE WINNER IS...

Votes have been tabulated for the May GDS. Here they are:

• 1st place, with 8 votes: Entry #5: Royal Wedding by Ron Krause!
• 2nd place, with 7 votes: Entry #1: Hubert's Royal Wedding by Richard Durham!

• 3rd place, with 5 votes: 3 way tie!

  • Entry #2: Royal Divorce by Richard James and Brad Phillips
  • Entry #4: Royal Ushers by Ciprian Alexandra
  • Entry #6: Please Be Seated by loonoly
• Last place, with 4 votes: Blood Lines by bhazzard

Congrats to the winner and runner up for a very close finish! The Critiques Thread is now open - please critique the entries!

I'd like to know which features of this website are being used, which are cool but unusable, and which are simply not useful. So please reply to this thread and let me know which features you use and like, which you would like to use if they were somehow different, and what you'd like to see as a feature of BGDF.

Right now I'm just gathering information, but I do hope to use this information before too long to greatly improve the BGDF experience!

Thanks,
Seth

I have tabulated the Top 10 lists, and looking at the distribution of first round votes, I have made the cutoff at 13 votes - that is to say each entry with 13 or more votes has moved on to round 2. There are 8 entries that made the cut.

For round 2 we will return to the normal GDS voting format:

• You may assign up to 6 votes to the entries of your choice
• You may assign no more than 3 votes on any 1 entry
• You may not vote on your own entry
• You need not assign all 6 votes

To vote, PM sedjtroll with the following format:
Subject:
FEB GDS VOTE
Body:
#XX [Entry title] - X votes
#XX [Entry title] - Y votes
#XX [Entry title] - Z votes
(For convenience you can copy and paste the lines below)