Hippodice

I haven't received my email yet. I would assume they would send out the qualifiers first so they have plenty of time to send in their prototypes. The wait is killing me! :)

Yeah, I'm still waiting for the official word on my own entry.

Well done to all who submitted and made it through to the next round ... and well done also to those that tried and didn't make it - it is still an achievement to design a game at all.

I suppose I'm paying the price for getting caught up in my work for the last few months. I had been planning on submitting a game, but life has passed me by ...

The 2004 Hippodice winner Harem is to debut at the Nuremburg game fair in 2006. Produced by Phalanx games it has been renamed Serail.

Details at Boardgame News.

http://www.boardgamenews.com/index.php/boardgamenews/comments/convention...

Looks like the theme stayed entirely intact ;) so it is obviously a good one - congratulations to Paul and Lisbet!!

Phillip

Here is a link to last year's Hippodice top ten. The descriptions are in German if you can read them, but if you can't, what's interesting is that the pictures showing the games, show that they are really not flashy at all, last years winner used lego blocks for it's pieces and really no illustrations of cool pieces. The other games are pretty art poor as well. I think this is good to keep in mind when submitting a game to them; Don't knock yourself out over art. http://www.hippodice.de/inhalt.php?pg=63

Just click submit.

Or just click 'alle' and it will list them all, then click on the game title you want.

Congratulations to all BGDF folks who got their name mentioned on Hippodice.

I'm Yort Watson; I got my game Megalopolis on the recommend list but not on the final round list. Does anyone know the implications of this? I'm excited I got mentioned but since I didn't actually win I feel in limbo.

I would be interested to hear what experiences other BGDF from the current or the past have had.

Yort (Triktrak)

OK, I've composed myself.

Lots of people on this board have given me advice, help, and encouragement with Wag the Wolf. Huge thank yous to all of you!

Big kudos to Jeph and Watson for their performances. I was lucky enough to try Jeph's Port Dover at PowWow. I'm not surprised it was a finalist. It's an outstanding game.

Congratulations and best wishes to all who entered this year!

EDIT: I don't know what "recommendation" means; this is the first year I've seen it. I do see that the recommended games have their entries up on the hippodice.de site.

Also, what is a "full-length" game?

Wow, thats awesome.
Congrats to all the designers!

Extra special thanks to Mark for reminding me to enter!
Thanks Mark!

Hope to see some faces at Protospiel '06!

PS. I am putting some self-production photos up on the 'geek under the publisher Stahlspiel, as I made 50 copies of Port Dover to give away.
Look forward to an article explaining my process.

PPS. And for the record I am from Canada (not USA)

Yes, I got the same thing... from Alea!

I think last year they had 15 finalists. So perhaps they wanted to focus on fewer finalists, but still give some recognition to the top 15.

Zaiga, thanks for the clarification! Now I want to play all these games. There should be a Hippodice traveling convention... or at least a booth at Gen Con!

Congrats guys! Good work! And another congrats on the interested publishers!

I too had the pleasure of playing an iteration of Jeph's Port Dover at Pow Wow last year. As I recall, I wanted to buy it right then and there! Of course, I also recall he changed it a half dozen times during the event =).

I also played Wag the Wolf at the event. How cool. Folks, if you can attend Protospiel or Pow Wow (no Pow Wow this year, next year), do it! Not only do you get great feed back at these events, you also get to see the future of gaming. I highly recommend these events to aspiring designers.

-Darke

Yup. Here's mine for "Bloc War". They sent it to me in English. Maybe because your game had a German name they thought you were a native speaker?

Your game All games
Playing is great fun (1) / is dull (6) 2,8 (Bloc War) 2,8 (All games' average)
Mechanism works well (1) / does not work (6) 1,5 (Bloc War) 1,5 (Average)
New idea (1) / well known idea (6) 2,6 (Bloc War) 3,1 (Average)
Play it again at once (1) / never again (6) 2,3 (Bloc War) 3,1 (Average)
Complete rules (1) / incomplete rules (6) 1,7 (Bloc War) 1,9 (Average)
Rules easy to understand (1) / not understandable (6) 2,0 (Bloc War) 2,0 (Average)

The average playing time for your game was 33 minutes (plus 16 minutes for preparation, i. e. reading and understanding the rules), which resulted in grade 3.5 on a scale of „too short (1) / too long (6)“. On the scale of “Good luck only (1) / Strategic and tactical thinking (6)” your game scored 5.2
Here are some comments of our test players:
1 Simple rules, but great tactical game. Rules structure could be better. Quite out-dated subject.
2 Someone did not quite understand the “Push” rules (they are clear, but should be explained somewhat better).
3 It was unclear, if Spies can be pushed out of Trety zones.
4 Great idea put into effect with only few components.

Definitely a "mid field finish", as Scurra says. However, the comments gave me heart. I'm also pleased that a game that's so small (16 cards and 16 tokens) managed to please some people.

K.

For compactness, here again are the Hippodice ratings on Disciples:

Playing is great fun (1) / is dull (6) 2.7 (2.8)
Mechanism works well (1) / does not work (6): 2.0 (1.5)
New idea (1) / well known idea (6) 2.7 (3.1)
Play it again at once (1) / never again (6) 2.7 (3,1)
Complete rules (1) / incomplete rules (6) 1.3 (1.9)
Rules easy to understand (1) / not understandable (6)1.7 (2.0)

Too short (1)/Too long (6) 4.3
Luck only (1)/Strategic and Tactical thinking 3.0

Average play time: 82 minutes (+29 minutes to learn and set up, the game)