2021 Award Results

The Cardboard Edison Award recognizes great unpublished board games

Announcing the winners of the 2021 Cardboard Edison Award!

First Place, In-Person: It’s a Tie!

Winter & Octopus Scramble

Two games tied for first place in the 2021 Cardboard Edison Award In-Person Track!

Winter

Designers: Maria Blasco & Enrique Blasco | @brotedejuegos

Winter is an 18-card and 18-token game divided in two phases: freezing and thawing. First each player will help to freeze the lake while falling flakes of their color. When all the cards have been placed, the thaw starts and you will have to get your flakes to survive while your opponent's flakes melt. How many snow will be at the end of winter?

Judges’ comments on Winter:

This game was a big surprise for such a small game. The strategic nuances in the decisions presented to the players is fabulous.

I genuinely adore this game! It's really cute, and surprisingly deep for its weight. I really can't say enough positive things about this game. I want it!

It's pretty, it's simple, it's quiet, and you can see the lake freezing and thawing just as you intended.

This game is so good. Players kept playing it because they liked it so much. Beautiful design work!

About the designers:

Brote de Juegos (roughly translated as Sprout of Games) is the brand name for the games created by siblings María and Enrique. They are from Sagunto, a sunny coastal and historical Spanish city. Maria works as an architect and graphic designer, and Enrique teaches maths to teenagers. They are members of LUDO, the Spanish association of game authors. Since 2015 they have designed some “18 card games” that they offer as print-and-plays.

Octopus Scramble

Designer: Karl Lange | @ArkAngel_Games

Octopus Scramble is a fast-paced set collection game with an attractive twist - you control an Octopus, rotating and rolling your way around the ocean, gathering magnetic tiles on each side as you go! Score points by collecting sets of similar items on your Octopus and compete for the most of each colour & item!

Judges’ comments on Octopus Scramble:

LOVE the innovation of using magnetic cubes to pick up tiles, and the puzzle-y aspect where you have to picture the cube rotation in your head to plan ahead. Great work!

The core mechanic is so cool and original! I had a blast playing it! I got so lost in the gameplay, I forgot I was judging it for the award! 

I had a ton of fun playing this game. It combined just enough strategy in terms of where to go and what to pick up with a really smooth and cute mechanic. 

Gameplay was fun and engaging. As soon as it ended, I wanted to play again.

About the designer:

Karl Lange is a part-time engineer and part-time board game designer and developer from Melbourne, Australia. After finishing university in 2014, Karl stumbled across modern board games, and since then has thrown himself deep into the hobby. In addition to designing and developing, Karl is also on the committee of the Tabletop Game Designers Australia, a not-for-profit advocating and facilitating Australian tabletop game design development and commercialization. He’s a founding member of the GV Gamers Guild, a not-for-profit running weekly meetups to play games and an annual board game convention known as ShepparCon. And he’s administrator of the Incubator [ONLINE] digital playtest group and Incubator Melbourne physical playtest group. When not playing with cardboard, he enjoys hiking and traveling with his wife, Laura.

First Place, Online: Surf’s Up

Surf's Up

Designers: Jason Mowery & Chase Williams | @jason_mowery & @Avett_Fan

Grab your board, paddle out, and try to perform the most impressive tricks on the gnarliest wave. Surf’s Up presents a very unique challenge. By drafting cards and adding them to your own tableau, you’ll need to successfully create a wave and plan the tricks that'll be performed on that wave. But you’ll also need to simultaneously focus on paddling far enough out in the water to actually catch and surf the very wave you're creating!

Judges’ comments on Surf’s Up:

The thematic nature of the mechanics are brilliant. The game really feels like you are paddling out and planning to catch that one big wave.

There's a really nice core tension between creating a wave that's far from shore, and paddling out far enough to catch it. It feels risky and energizing—like I imagine surfing to be! I want to play this again already!

Each turn is a balance between drawing cards to extend the wave, playing tricks to generate points, and moving along the wave to maximise the efficiency of the cards played. This makes every move an interesting choice.

This was super original, solid, and a lot of fun. Nice job!

About the designers:

Originally from Ft. Wayne, Indiana, Jason Mowery achieved his Bachelor’s Degree in Music Engineering Technology from Ball State University and quickly moved to Music City to pursue a career in Nashville’s country music industry. He has since become a Grammy-nominated multi-instrumentalist (fiddle, dobro, mandolin, banjo, guitar, etc.) and has made his living performing live and recording with some of music’s biggest stars including John Fogerty, Shania Twain, Keith Urban, Clint Black, and many more. When he isn’t on the road or in the studio, Jason is an avid participant in the modern board gaming hobby and has also co-designed several board games, including 2018’s The Big Score, published by Van Ryder Games.

Chase Williams was introduced to hobby gaming in the last 10 years, and it quickly became a hobby that he enjoys not only for the social aspect but for the mental challenge as well. He’s drawn to unique mechanics and heavier games but enjoys any chance to sit at the table with friends. Surf’s Up is his second design with his great friend, Jason Mowery, and he thinks it brings a great offering for players that enjoy a quick game with just enough depth to make your brain work.

Runner-Up, Online: Spokes

Designer: Bert Hardeman | @HardemanBert

Spokes is an abstract race game about track cycling. Use your spokes to make long routes! Use each other's routes and plan for the next round to become the winner of spokes!

Finalists: In-Person Track

Alone in the VVoods

Designer: Aaron Pfeil | @AloneintheVVood

In Alone in the VVoods, players are given a secret role as either a Villager or a Witch. Everyone lives in a village where all of the precious resources are rotting or have gone missing. To keep the village alive, players must get up from the main table and move to the Woods, which are located in different rooms of your house. The Villagers are looking for Meat, Water, and Lumber cards in the Woods, whereas Witches are looking to convert Villagers into Witches.

Amazement Park

Designer: Dave Myers

Amazement Park is a tile-laying game where park designers try to build the most popular amusement park by claiming pieces of roller coasters, food stands, games, and gift shops to place in their park all while trying to keep within their budget.

Cube Monster

Designer: Dor Sakal

In Cube Monster, players are builders living in a world where cubes are everything. Build Factories to manufacture cubes, Thieves to steal cubes from your friends, and Marketplaces to swap cubes for different colors. To win the game, you need to please the Cube Monster by giving it cubes and by building Statues and Shrines.

Distilled

Designer: Dave Beck | @paverson

Distilled is a highly thematic strategy card game about crafting spirits in a distillery, with resource management, push-your-luck, and tableau building elements. In the game, you have inherited an abandoned distillery from a distant relative, and are now tasked with bringing your family’s business back to its former glory!

Down, Peasant!

Designer: Ellie Dix | @elliedixtweets

Despite living a life of extreme luxury, you are dissatisfied and restless. In an instant you vow to construct a slew of mansions and erect a series of intimidating monuments. The people will watch and admire... nay worship you! But nothing will coax you into sullying your delicate slippers in the filth of the street. Instead you will walk upon the backs of your peasant following as they eat the dirt.

Look at the Stars

Designer: Romain Caterdjian

Players watch the night sky and use their white pen to draw constellations. While the sun is slowly rising, they want to witness the most beautiful night. And who knows, they may even see some Shooting Stars...

Orchard Square

Designer: Greg Lewis

A tile-placement, dice-drafting game about growing and harvesting apples.

Oros

Designer: Brandt Brinkerhoff | @AescGames

Oros is a competitive strategy game for 1 to 4 players, that will have you manipulating a shared environment like a giant puzzle of plate tectonics. In the game, you will take on the role of Demigods, sent from the Wise One as messengers of wisdom and knowledge, to bring the mysteries of the mountains to the people scattered across the islands of the earth.

Finalists: Online Track

Bangkok Market

Designer: Francisco Arena | @fcoarena

Bangkok Market is a game where players open shops in the floating market, and use lots of actions to influence tourists into their shops in order to become the best merchant of Thailand! It uses area control, pick-up and deliver, and resource management mechanisms.

Battle Dentale

Designer: Emily Willix

A tooth fairy and a gum goblin walk into a bar, reveal tiny tooth-filled pouches from their leather satchels, and sit down to play the most ancient game of the tooth-collector class: Battle Dentale. In this challenge of wits and magic, two players compete to collect the most valuable hoard of teeth from a gameboard fashioned after a human skull, and prevent their opponent from doing the same.

Big Game Bayou

Designer: Nejc Mesesnel

Big Game Bayou is a cooperative game, where players will take control of a steamboat on a journey through the bayou. Their goal: to eradicate a monster that is terrorizing the local population, before it can destroy their ship.

Days of Muertos

Designer: Luis da Ponte

Days of Muertos is a ladder climbing, hand management, and set collection card game in which for five days you will be making offerings into your family altar to reach your loved ones and celebrate with them in this especial Mexican holiday.

Gobble-Ins!

Designer: Tanner Simmons | @FourStringFS

Gobble-Ins! is a competitive treasure-eating game with inventory management mechanics. You take the role of hungry goblins whose diets have evolved to the point of being able to consume valuable trinkets and powerful weaponry. Spend Action Points to traverse Loot's Abandon, gobble up treasures as they tumble down from above to add them to your puzzle like stomach, and use each treasure's unique abilities to gain the upper hand before they become fully digested.

Steam Up: A Feast of Dim Sum

Designers: Pauline Kong, Marie Wong & Haymen Lee | @hotbananagame

Steam Up: A Feast of Dim Sum is a competitive 2-5 player light-medium weight Dim Sum set collection game offering a delicious cultural experience. It transforms a traditional culture into a fun immersive experience filled with surprises that can be played between 45-60 minutes.

Super Snipers

Designer: Galen McCown | @galen_games

Super Snipers is a 2-player, dueling sniper game that features easy-to-pick-up rules, fast and intense gameplay, simultaneous turns, virtually no downtime, and a familiar polyomino puzzle mechanic used in a novel and exciting way.

The Trail

Designer: Matt Ding | @KingDin50936095

The Trail is a lightweight solo game of tile-laying, puzzle-solving, and pushing your luck that plays in around 15 minutes. You are lost in the woods and night is falling. Draw tiles from a limited supply to find your way back to camp before the Wolf catches you.

Honorable Mention: Fairywood by Isaac Shalev & Jason Slingerland

Timeline for the 2021 Cardboard Edison Award

• April-May: finalist judging

• June: winners announced

Sponsors for the 2021 Cardboard Edison Award

Alpha Player Level Sponsors:

Game Master Level Sponsors:

Meeple Level Sponsors:

Judges for the 2021 Cardboard Edison Award

Click the photos for bios.

See the results from previous years’ Cardboard Edison Award

Rules

To be eligible for the award, designs must not be publicly available through any retail, secondary, or print-on-demand market, including Kickstarter, before July 2021. Designs may not be licensed to a publisher during the period of the award. Designs must be original works that do not infringe on any intellectual property. Board, card, and dice games are eligible. Sorry, no RPGs or videogames.

New for 2021: Submissions will be accepted in two tracks: online judging and in-person judging. Designers will select the track they deem most appropriate for their games.

Submissions must include a brief description of the game, a video overview, and a rules document. See the submissions page for full guidelines and submission fee information.

Submissions will be judged based on engagement, originality of theme, and originality of mechanics. Finalists also will be judged based on engagement, smoothness of play, and fit for target audience.

Submissions will go through two rounds of judging. Finalists chosen for the second round of judging will need to mail us a physical prototype for final in-person judging or provide a Tabletop Simulator mod for online judging. Finalists will receive full feedback from the judges.

One design from each track will be chosen as the winner, at the judges' discretion. Judges are not eligible to enter.

Designs should be complete and playtested before being submitted. Prototypes do not need to have final artwork or graphics, but they should be clear and usable.

All designs remain the intellectual property of the designers.

FAQ

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