Design Contest Winner Announcement

[Michael Schoessow <mschoessow@...>]

The winner of the Third Piecepack Game Design Competition is,....

               NEW CITY  by Rob LeGood

Congratulations Rob!


Runner up was ICEFLOE by Tim Schutz, and the game that most elegantly fit
the Changing Landscapes theme was clearly SAN ANDREAS by James Kyle.

Choosing the winner was not too difficult and all the play-testers who tried
New City agreed that it should probably win. This is not to say that there
weren't other excellent games; there were, and choosing the runner up took a
bit more thought. 

Of the sixteen games submitted, two were purely abstract (although one had
an attached theme), five involved the memory of hidden information, three
were German-style family strategy games, two were racing games, and three
involved auction/voting type elements. One game was strictly 2-player, while
the others were variously either 2-4, 3-4 or 4-player. Most of the games
included some sort of luck element, either via a die or through blind tile
selection. Interestingly, three games had themes involving icebergs or
frozen lakes. Five games had themes dealing with kingdoms or royalty. Only
one game was clearly themeless. All in all, it was a nice selection. In
terms of play-quality there was also a fairly wide spread, with some games
feeling thoroughly dialed in while others would benefit from further
play-testing and tweaking. 

New City is German-style game of city building. As with many German games,
it is played in "rounds", with various actions (including an auction, a
district-building phase, an improvement-building phase, an income collection
phase, etc.) taking place in order each round. It displays the typical
elements of an excellent game; there are difficult decisions almost every
turn and there is a lot of player interaction on a couple of different
levels. The game also has good depth and excellent clarity, as well as the
right sort of randomizing element to insure good re-playability. As with
many excellent games of this genre, thoughtful play is well rewarded, and in
my opinion the balance between luck and skill is just where it should be
with enough luck to keep things interesting but not so much that a skilled
player will be unjustly robbed of a deserved victory. Rob lists the game as
strictly 4-player, but we happily discovered at one point (when there were
only two of us present and we wanted to play New City again) that it plays
very well with two players if each player takes two oppositely positioned
city quarters and then at the end of the game scores only the income of his
or her lower scoring quarter. The rules to New City are also well written,
with a nice dose of wry humor. I do have one very minor criticism. The
scoring track, although workable, is inconvenient compared to just using
some coins to keep track of income, and after the first game we always used
coins for money.

IceFloe is another game that displayed balance and polish, and was also
surprisingly fun to play considering that it's pretty abstract in nature. I
don't mean to imply anything against abstract games (which I'm a big fan of)
but usually I think of them as providing "satisfaction" rather than "fun".
The heart of this game is a clever secret voting mechanism for elimination
of part of the board each round of turns. Two critical rules really make
this work well;  firstly, there is always one player (called the
torch-bearer) who oversees the vote and in the case of a tie the
torch-bearer gets to decide the outcome. This leads to some very interesting
bluffing, temporary alliances, etc. It all feels rather Knizian in some
ways. Secondly, table-talk is regulated. Talking is allowed but only in
generalities, with the utterance of names, numbers, colors, etc. being
sharply proscribed, with violators losing voting rights for one round.
Altogether it's a highly enjoyable game. Thanks Tim! One last thing; the
rules suggest that the torch-bearer be identified by an actual burning item
such as a candle that can be passed to the next player between rounds. This
is essential for proper enjoyment of the game. We used one of those giant
stand-alone candles (3" dia. by 8" high) and it was very satisfying to have
the torch passed to you at the beginning of a round.

San Andreas is a fairly quick game that probably falls into the category of
"filler", perfect at the beginning or end of a game evening. It's a great
little game (and extra-interesting for those of us living on the California
coast) using tiles arrayed to form a map of California, with pieces tilting
or shifting in response to earthquakes during the game. Players are scored
on towns they place, with the ones near the coast being more lucrative, IF
they make it to the end of the game without being buried (literally) or
falling into the ocean. Good fun.

In addition to New City, IceFloe, and San Andreas, there were a number of
other games that I particularly liked for various reasons. Decay was the
only purely abstract game and it is based on a tile placement/array system
different from anything I've seen before. If you like abstracts and want to
try something different, give it a try. Froggy Bottom is an unassuming
little game that is quite enjoyable. It's the only 2-player game in the
group and is a racing game (in the game theory sense) with a memory element.
It's also a quick play so it's another nice filler. King's Cottage is clever
game with a number of unique ideas. It also has a major memory aspect, and
this makes it feel like a lot of work to play for people like me (my memory
isn't so hot), but I found it to be fun just the same. The theme (competing
craft houses and builders constructing and furnishing a cottage for the
king) is particularly well done. The game works well for 2-4 players but it
is a game with a fairly high luck element so mileage may vary on that
account.


Let me describe how the timing worked with the game judging and author
identities, just to answer some questions that would otherwise come in over
the next few days. FIRST I sent my choice for winner, runner-up, etc. to
Karol in her capacity as contest administrator, and THEN she sent me a
cross-listing of authors names and game titles so I could include author
names in this posting. Thus I did not know author identities until after I
had decided the winners.

I want to give special thanks to Karol at Mesomorph Games for the huge
amount of work she has done, including organization, proof-reading, and
tracking down answers to my questions to the authors. I think that for
future contests we should probably re-think how these aspects of the contest
work because it's an unreasonable amount of effort to ask of one person.
Thanks Karol for making everything work smoothly!

I also want to thank Lisa, Reinhard, Gabi, Shay, Wei-Hwa, Arik, Barry, and
Santiago for playing the games with me and contributing their opinions and
insights. 

I will be contacting Rob concerning the prize etc., and if any other of the
game authors are interested in the play-testers' opinions and comments about
their games, feel free to e-mail me privately (mschoessow@...).

The rules for all sixteen games are posted at the piecepack.org site. Karol
asked me to pass on to the authors that if they have any questions about the
rules for their games as posted on the piecepack.org site they should send
e-mails to submissions@.... and put the game name as the subject.
Authors will now also have an opportunity to make changes to their rules
sets before they are added to the rules CD.  

Once again, congratulations to the winning authors and thanks to all who
participated. I encourage you, and all piecepack enthusiasts, to participate
in the next competition!

-Mike