Game Design Showdown

April 2009 Challenge - "Dictyostelids"

CHALLENGE IS NOW CLOSED. WINNER ANNOUNCED

Design a board game in which the players control their pieces in a whay that somehow resembles the individual and aggregate states of the Dictyostelid cellular slime molds.

Theme: Free. The game theme can be literally about cellular slime molds, or cellular nano-robots, or any other thing the designer finds suitable to the main challenge premise.

A pair of entries tied with the most votes for best entry in the March 2009 GDS Challenge:

• Valley of Winds by awakener76
• Trailer Park: The Game! by stubert

Congratulations to both of them, and the other 5 entries that came within a vote or two of that top mark. The March Challenge was entitled "Sharing the Wind" and was looking for games themed around wind that included a shared piece or pieces.

Get all the details in the Challenge Thread.

Long time BGDF member Dwight Sullivan (Xaqery) has just won the 1st prize at Hippodice 2009 with his game Noblemen.

If you think that's not enough, second place went to Jeff Allers (jeffinberlin), another BGDF member and regular poster on the site, for Wampum. Even more, he placed a second game in the top six, Artifact.

Congratullations to both on this great achievement!

You can see the official results (in German) here.

Congratulations to InvisibleJon and his entry "Duplicity", which was voted the best response to this month's Challenge. The Challenge was entitled "Back in time: roll-and-move", and was looking for games about going back in time with strategically meaningful roll-and-move mechanics.

You can get all of the details on the Challenge Thread.

Mary Prasad has put together an enjoyable tour of the Ludo Fact game manufacturer in Germany. She includes lots of photos and plenty of good information. Check it out at Boardgame News!

Members can now create How-To content for sharing with other members. To create a How-To start by going to the How-To area using the link located in the top right area of the site (located in the blue banner area just above the recent topics column).

Once you go to the How-To area there is a very VERY basic How-To on creating a How-To! So if you feel creative and would like to share your methods, skills and steps on how to create something, please share by creating a How-To.

Enjoy,
--The BGDF Staff

By Jove he's done it again!

Congratulations to ilta for his entry "Back to You", which was voted the best response to this month's Challenge. The Challenge was entitled "No I in Team", and was looking for non sports games with team play.

You can get all of the details on the Challenge Thread.

Please note that there is NO longer a Private Message area located in the right column. This is a direct result of the PM indicator being moved and handled next to the Messages link located in the left navigation column area. If you have new messages you will now see something such as

Messages (#)

Located in the left column area under the Personal menu option. The # will indicate the number of new messages, if there is no (#) located next to the text, that means you have no new PMs.

Thanks,
--The BGDF Staff

Members should now be able to use the new GRANT feature to assign other members to a Game Journal they create. Once the initial Game Journal item is created (say just the title). A new GRANT option should appear to the right of the title.

When selected the GRANT page will give you a method to enter a user name to find the member you wish to grant permissions to your page.

Enter the member name (or partial name), once have the member name you have to select the KEEP checkbox, and select the checkbox permissions you wish to give (view, edit, delete), and lastly hit save.

Phase 1 of the site update has been completed, with one casualty, PM messages are at least temporarily lost. These *lost* PMs still exist in the database, but some software updates to the system is causing some random issues with the availability of the PMs. If you have any issues with OLD missing PMs please PM Zzzzz and all attempts will be made to resolve the issue.

Updates will be continuing through out the next few days, but the majority of the down time should be over with this Phase 1 update.

A message outlining the additional enhancements and changes will follow shortly, once a few additional tweaks are accomplished.

But for starters, besides the ability to DELETE PMs now, there will also be some access level changes that will allow members the ability to grant access to their content to other members. YES collaboration on game journals should be available shortly!

Thanks,
--BGDF Staff