Hey all! I'm in charge of board gaming at RinCon this year (Oct 8-10, 2010) and I'm going to make sure there's a robust prototype testing/game design element at the con!

June 2010 Game Design Showdown - "Slippery Slope"

Please Read: Details on entering the Game Design Showdown.

This Challenge is now OVER. Congratulations to this months winner, Gentoo, with 15 votes! Runners up are Alma Mater with 12 votes, and League of Artistic Wizards with 10 votes.

With 11 entries and 64 total votes I think this was a successful Showdown! I look forward to reading the critiques thread.

There's a thread on BGG I wanted to make sure everyone saw. Rio Grande Games is sponsoring a game design contest in which each finalist will have the opportunity to sit down with Jay Tummelson face to face and pitch their game. Last year he agreed to publish 4 of the entries!

Even if your entry doesn't win, the opportunity to get direct feedback from a publisher is pretty good, especially considering there appears to be no or very little cost to enter.

Game Design Showdown

April 2010 Challenge - "The REAL Risk Game"

THIS CHALLENGE HAS BEEN COMPLETED.
Congratulations to the winner of this month's tight fight for the Game Design Showdown victory:
- Entry #2: "Drunken Strippers Ahead" by Dave Dobson (dobnarr). 22 votes (5, 5, 3, 3, 3, 3)

Game Design Showdown

February 2010 Challenge - "iBoardgame - there's an AP for that!"

This Challenge has been completed.

Congratulations to the winner of this month's Game Design Showdown with 14 votes:

• "DeathCurl" by ilta (Isaiah Tanenbaum)

Oddly, we've had a tie for 2nd two months in a row now... and with 7 votes each again! Congratulations to the runners up:

• "Torrent Pirates" by oicu12b12 (Matt Saunders)
• "iTook" by last month's winner simons

CRITIQUES: Post constructive critiques and commentary about the entries to this Challenge in the Critiques Thread.

Please Read: Details on entering the Game Design Showdown are here: GDS details.

Voting for the The February GDS is now open closed!
Each person has 6 votes to distribute any way they choose among the GDS entries with the following restrictions:

• You may not assign any votes to your own entry!
• You may not assign more than 3 votes to any single entry.
• You need not assign all 6 votes.

In addition, any entry using this month's Bonus theme will receive an additional 2 votes.

Main Design Requirements:

• Component Restriction: Apple recently revealed their new product - a device which is supposed to bridge the game between laptops and smart phones. In a bid to capture as much of the media market as possible, they have come out with the iPad, a device designed to make media consumption easy and fun. Apple has always been on the cutting edge of user interface, as evidenced from the original Mac GUI (which Microsoft ripped off for Windows) to the magical interface of the iPhone, and every step along the way. Their new iPad is no exception.

For this month's GDS there is a strict component restriction. The game must use an iPad as a central or shared board, and must use iPhones (or iPad Touch) as player boards. It's up to you how exactly these components are used, but no other components can be added. That's not as big a restriction as it may sound though, as either of those devices can do things like roll dice, or display tokens of all shapes and sizes - or for the purpose of the GDS you can assume they do. Also assume that the devices can be made to link up such that virtual items can be moved from one screen to another with the flick of a finger.

Clarification: The fact that the player boards are separate from and independent of the central board should be significant!