We found out about a game design competition at University of Central Oklahoma and reached out to Dr. Mark Silcox, who’s a Professor and Chair of the Department of Humanities and Philosophy. The Game Crafter loves supporting/promoting board game designer events so we asked him to share a brief article about the contest. Here’s what he had to say:
“For the past seven years, the University of Central Oklahoma’s Chess & Games Club has been holding an annual game design competition during the spring academic term. Contestants are asked to submit brief descriptions of their games in February, and to have complete rulesets and playable prototypes prepared by around the middle of March. Members of the university’s very active and friendly club then pay through each game, and rate them on a scale of one (I have just been to hell”) to ten (“I would buy this off the rack!”).
Every year brings a different crop of surprises. There turn out to be some remarkably imaginative and talented amateur game designers hidden away at our school! Past winners of the competition have included homebrewed RPG adventures, clever adaptations of classic card games, dice-fests featuring rampaging Kaiju monsters, and a playset for the popular storygame Fiasco.
The first prize winner for the seventh annual competition in 2016 was Diamon Kaiser’s Megalomania, an exciting, fast-paced tactical card game built loosely on the model of computer fighting games like Mortal Kombat and Super Smash Brothers.
Players begin as feeble thugs duking it out in back alleys, and slowly progress until they are near-omnipotent demigods throwing whole galaxies back and forth.
Second place went to The Demise of Black Swan by Patrick Douglas, a winner of the contest in previous years.
In this suspenseful, Euro-style brain-burner, great families strategize to make the best marriages and keep warring fantasy races in line as they wait for the immanent death of their nation’s king.
All five of the games entered in this year’s competition were lovingly constructed out of spare pieces from other games, chunks of scavenged plastic and Bristol board, and artworks in the public domain. But Diamon and Patrick, this year’s two winners were thrilled to receive gift certificates from The Game Crafter. The superior materials now available to them should help give their future designs a major boost in both style and substance.”
If you are hosting a game design contest, be sure to get in touch with us and maybe we can support and promote your event as well. Happy designing!