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It’s Your Turn…

A helpful resource for all aspects of designing board games: game design, prototyping, playtesting, publishing, and much much more!

May GDS coming this week!

Mon, 05/10/2010 - 12:20 — sedjtroll

There WILL be a Game Design Showdown for May, and it will be posted later this week... so get those creative juices flowing! Watch for the GDS thread for details, but here's a teaser for you: the showdown challenge will revolve around home renovation/remodeling.

- Seth

GDS April 2010 Challenge - "The REAL Risk Game

Fri, 04/09/2010 - 09:48 — seo

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)

March 2010 Challenge - "Back to work, slacker!"

Thu, 03/11/2010 - 05:23 — sedjtroll

March 2010 Game Design Showdown - "Back to work, Slacker!"

This Challenge has been completed.
Congratulations to the winner of this month's Game Design Showdown with 8 votes:
- "Rebuilding Jerusalem" by Piqsid (David Pontier)
Congratulations to the runner up with 6 votes:
- "Apocolypse Colony" by Glimok (Aaron Armstrong)
CRITIQUES: Post constructive critiques and commentary about the entries to this Challenge in the Critiques Thread.

Voting on the March 2010 Game Design Showdown is now closed!

  • Voting: Through Thursday, 25-March-2010.
  • Voting Format: 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.

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

Thu, 02/11/2010 - 07:51 — sedjtroll

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!

GDS January 2010 Challenge: "Which way did he go?!?"

Thu, 01/07/2010 - 16:43 — sedjtroll

Game Design Showdown

January 2010 Challenge - "Which way did he go?!?"

This Challenge has been completed.

Congratulations to the winner of this month's Game Design Showdown with 11 votes:

  • "Monster Island" by simons

Congratulations to the runners up as well with 7 votes each:

  • "Asteroid Mining" by Seo
  • "Cave of the Old Fat Dragon" by last month's winner Don Jon

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.

Main Design Requirements:

  • BOARD game: Many games nowadays don't use a central board. This challenge requires the use of a central board. You are to create a game where geography of the board matters.

  • Route Planning: A major concern in the game should be route planning. That is not to say it must be the only concern, but a significant part of the game should revolve around planning a route in some way, and therefore interacting with the geography on the board, which as we already know, matters.

  • Deduction: A deduction mechanism shall be present in some form in the game. It's your job to decide how or in what manner.

Scheduled maintenance

Thu, 01/07/2010 - 16:01 — sedjtroll

The software for the website has been out of date, and will be updated this weekend. This scheduled maintenance will occur at or around 1am EST on Friday, Saturday, and/or Sunday and may last a couple of hours each day. So if you have trouble accessing BGDF.com during that time, that's why.

Sorry for the inconvenience, please spend that time working on your game prototypes, and then you can post about them next week! :)

'Changing of the Guard' here at BGDF

Thu, 11/12/2009 - 15:45 — Darkehorse

Folks,

It is with a heavy, but hopeful heart, that I have decided to step down as the main administrator of the BGDF. For those of you who have been here a while, you've probably noticed my involvement waning over the past years. This is due to many factors, but mainly it is because of increasing work and family schedule demands. Rather than let BGDF 'fizzle out', I have decided to pass the reins in hopes that new leadership will spark the community to new levels of participation, both here and in the greater board game community.

So, with that being said, I have decided to tap Sedjtroll (Seth Jaffee) as the new leader of the community. As many of you know, Seth has recently aligned himself as a designer and developer for the new game publishing company Tasty Minstrel games. With this experience, coupled with his involvement in the convention scene and his existing veteran experience here at BGDF, I feel he will do a lot toward promoting the community and furthering the initial goal I had when creating the community, which was to help people feed their passion for creating games.

In addition, I have also asked Seo (Ariel Seoane) to also step up as co-administrator, specifically to assist in the technical day to day dealings of the website and community.

GDS November 2009 Challenge: "Travelling Light: King's Quest Edition"

Thu, 11/05/2009 - 11:28 — Brykovian

Game Design Showdown

November 2009 Challenge - "Travelling Light: King's Quest Edition"

This Challenge has been completed.

Congratulations to new BGDF member Don Jon and his entry "Find Me a New Prince Charming!" for receiving the most votes this month!

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

Hippodice is on again!

Mon, 10/05/2009 - 21:51 — sedjtroll

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!

Game Design Showdown September 2009 Challenge: "Canned Space"

Thu, 09/10/2009 - 14:19 — doho123
Film Cnister

Game Design Showdown

September 2009 Challenge - "Canned Space"

  • Submissions were accepted: Thursday, 10-Spetember-2009 through Thursday, 17-September-2009.
    • Voting was tallied: Friday, 18-September-2009 through Friday, 25-September-2009.

And the winner is....

"Drop Pods" by Jpwoo.

Congratulations as being selected the best of the four games in this month's contest, winning by a single vote over "Deep Scan" by Brykovian.

Main Design Requirements:

  • Theme: Outer Space Exploration.
  • Component Requirement: Must use 35mm film canisters (or similar). Can use black with gray lid, or semi-transparent (both body and lid). (see picture to the right). Feel free to add other components as you wish.
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by Dr. Radut