John Parker

We have been providing multiple services for a few small game publishers that are preparing their projects for Kickstarter. We will announce more as those designs complete and their Kickstarter projects launch. The services provided have ranged from editing rules and Kickstarter pages to playtesting and providing statistics to identify fragility in the design. In particular, we have been providing advice on solo play modes.

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Scythe BGG Product Image
Creative Role

Scythe is an engine-building game set in an alternate-history 1920s period. It is a time of farming and war, broken hearts and rusted gears, innovation and valor. In Scythe, each player represents a character from one of five factions of Eastern Europe who are attempting to earn their fortune and claim their faction's stake in the land around the mysterious Factory. Players conquer territory, enlist new recruits, reap resources, gain villagers, build structures, and activate monstrous mechs.

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Between Two Cities BGG Product Image
Creative Role

Between Two Cities is a partnership-driven tile-drafting game in which each tile represents part of a city: factory, shop, park, landmarks, etc. You work with the player on your left to design the heart of one city, and with the player on your right to design the heart of another city. On each turn you select two tiles from hand, reveal them, then work with your partners separately to place one of those tiles into each of your two cities before passing the remaining hand of tiles around the table.

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Euphoria BGG Product Image
Creative Role

In Euphoria: Build a Better Dystopia, you lead a team of workers (dice) and recruits (cards) to claim ownership of the dystopian world. You will generate commodities, dig tunnels to infiltrate opposing areas, construct markets, collect artifacts, strengthen allegiances, and fulfill secret agendas.

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Curators Product Image on BGG
Creative Role

In Curators, each player takes on the role of a museum's chief curator. Times are hard, but by developing creative displays and winning contracts for famous objects, you can turn the tides and make your museum the most visited in the world.

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John Parker

No surprise... The Colorado Game Designers Guild (CGDG) is a guild for game designers, primarily from Colorado and Wyoming that provides opportunities to share ideas, playtest, and market their products at local conventions.

Check back for more information on CGDG activities.

See our favorite resource entry for CGDG.

John Parker

Setup

It is probably a good thing that I didn’t set any specific gaming goals for 2017 – I played the least in several years by pretty much all ways of counting plays (sessions, games, times per game, etc.). I started the year with the simple, “I will get more organized, pare down, and do and share more in 2017 in a way that increases the enjoyment of the hobby for my friends, my family and myself.” Since this goal isn’t quantifiable, it is hard to measure my success, but I think I can say confidently that I failed. However, I did get a lot more D&D played, which was a good thing.

This year I am looking at a “Ten by Ten(ish)” goal, which last year I knew I couldn’t commit. Although I don’t ever cheat at the game table, I will cheat on this goal right off the starting space.

John Parker

Setup

Considering the statement made in Part 1 regarding the relevance of the SDJ to the BGG audience, let’s take a look at how the games considered for the SDJ rate on BGG. This rating begins with the Average User Rating, which drives the BGG Rating (which considers the number of User Ratings), and ultimately the BGG Rank (which stacks the BGG Ratings up against each other). Although, BGG Rank is ultimately the most interesting and will have the greatest focus in this article, we will look at some statistics about the SDJ and KSDJ games in the order that the BGG Rank is built: User Rating –> BGG Rating –> BGG Rank. All graphs have been derived from data obtained from BoardGameGeek.com in June and July 2017.

Note: If you are starting your reading with this article, you might want to jump to the introduction here: Industry Focus: Spiel des Jahres & the BGG Community Part 1

John Parker

Design Workbench

Design Objective

It has been a while since I first did the makeover of Nines to form Picky Packrats and I have played hundreds of rounds of the game as-is. So, why would I change anything? Well, to see if I can make it better. In this design round, we break the game layout out of the box and into a circle. A circle is more reminiscent of the rat midden that our theme is suggesting and it opens the game up to more scoring possibilities.

Playtest

I have played a few full games of 4 rounds each with my fellow expert player to test out the new layout and accompanying rules changes.

Prototype

The prototype hasn’t changed from the last round, but ultimately the game would layout better with symmetrical circular or, better yet, octagonal cards. Circular are easily doable thanks to the ubiquitous Spot It and circular cards are available on Game Crafter. Unfortunately, octagonal cards or tiles just aren’t a thing. Hexagons, of course are everywhere in gaming, but they just won’t do.

John Parker

Setup

The Spiel des Jahres (SDJ) award is intended to recognize games for “family and friends.” Does it hit that mark? The Kennerspiel des Jahres (KSDJ) was created to recognize more advanced games. Anecdotally, this is obvious from the difference in games that have won the awards, but is there a way to quantify this difference? Not dissimilar from other media, the complexity level of a game is represented by what gamers generally call “weight,” which is available as a community contributed measurement on BoardGameGeek.com. All graphs have been derived from data obtained from BoardGameGeek.com in June and July 2017.

Let’s take a look at the weight of SDJ and KSDJ winners and nominees over the years for insight into their level of complexity:

  1. What are their average and relative weights?
  2. Have their weights changed over the years? (Are the games getting more or less complex?)
  3. Have there been major changes over the years? What were the likely events that caused these changes?

Note: If you are starting your reading with this article, you might want to jump to the introduction here: Spiel des Jahres & the BGG Community Part 1