2022 Award Judges

Chris Kirkman is the founder of Dice Hate Me Games, and is currently the game development director at Greater Than Games, where he finds awesome games and makes them awesomer.

Geoff Engelstein is an award-winning tabletop game designer, whose titles include Space Cadets, The Fog of War, Pit Crew, and The Expanse. He also teaches Board Game Design at the NYU Game Center.

He is also a noted podcaster. Since 2007 he has been a contributor to the Dice Tower, the leading tabletop-game podcast, with a series on the math, science, and psychology of games. He previously hosted Ludology, a podcast on game design, and published “Game Production: Prototyping and Producing Your Board Game” and “The Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design” with CRC Press, and “Achievement Relocked” with MIT Press.

Kenechukwu Ogbuagu ‘KC’ is a Nigerian tabletop games designer and the founder of NIBCARD Games – a tabletop games designing, publishing, and manufacturing company in Nigeria. They are also the owners of the first tabletop games café in West Africa and host of the African Boardgames Convention, a yearly tabletop games convention that started in 2016.

KC has over 30 published games under his belt and in 2021, he won the Diana Jones Award for excellence in gaming.

His love for gaming has led him to introduce the hobby to many in his community, pioneering a renaissance of tabletop games within the region. His works have also been featured on CNN, BBC, Thomson Reuters, France 24, BoardGameGeek, Dice Tower, Dicebreaker, and many other local news in Nigeria.

His mantra is that games are like finding friends and there are always one for everyone. His work hopes to make games accessible in Africa and for African games to be accessible to the world.

Heather is the CEO of 9th Level Games. 9th Level is a small indie game design and publishing house known for blending humor, great mechanics and fun for over 20 years! Heather has designed tabletop board games and roleplaying games including Schrodinger's Cats, Pavlov's Dogs, Meeple Party, and Venture Village! Find out more at 9thlevel.com or follow @9thlevelgames.

Tim is a game designer and publisher as part of Galileo Games. He’s got a special fondness for two-player games and terrible puns. He spends his spare time making dice birds to torment Chris Kirkman.

Zev Shlasinger founded Z-Man Games in 1999. Some of the games published were Pandemic, Agricola, Merchants and Marauders, Fairy Tale, Tales of the Arabian Nights, and over 125 other games.

Zev sold the company in 2011 and worked for them for 4.5 years. Two weeks after leaving Z-Man, Zev was offered and accepted the position of director of board games for WizKids.

Under his current direction, over 40 games have been published including Sidereal Confluence, Fantasy Realms, Tournament at Camelot, and Mage Knight Ultimate Edition.

Sydney Engelstein has been working with games for over 10 years. Currently, she is the director of game development at Indie Game Studios, heading up the design of such projects as Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition and Aeon’s End. Aside from her own designs, she also handles acquisitions for the company, and loves to find exciting new prototypes to bring to life. This is her second year judging for Cardboard Edison, and she can’t wait to see all the great designs this year!

Scott has helped design top-selling video games including: Pac-Man World, the Maximo series, God of War, Drawn to Life series, Darksiders, and Warhammer 40K. A former Disney Imagineer, Scott designed board games (Pantone the Game, Rayguns and Rocketships), authored books (Level Up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design and Swipe This! The Guide to Touchscreen Game Design) and is featured in the documentary film Gamemaster (2020). He teaches at USC's prestigious school of interactive media and the New York Film Academy in Los Angeles where he hosts/produces their popular Masters of Game Design speaker series.

Dave Chalker is the award-winning game designer of Get Bit! and the Sentinel Comics RPG, as well as games including Heat, Thief's Market, That Snow Moon, and Thunder Road: Vendetta. He has over 20 years of game industry experience, during which time he's playtested for dozens of companies, and serves as an advisor to the Unpub board. He lives in Maryland with his wife and their cocker spaniels.

Eric is currently the project manager/developer for Talon Strikes Studios. He is the designer of Talon Strikes Studios' Vinyl and the producer of Cardboard Edison’s Cobras. He lives in Oyster Bay, N.Y., with his wife, Meredith, and two sons, Ari and Eli.

Joseph is a graphic designer with a strong passion for board game design. Joseph is on the Board of Directors for the non-profit playtesting community, Break My Game. He has an active involvement in the Break My Game community and helps with branding, marketing, web design, and event organizing. He holds a bachelor's degree in Fine Arts, with a focus in Video Game Art and Design, but along the way through college, video games became less interesting and board games grew into more than a pastime. Nowadays designing board games is his day-to-day hobby/obsession through his start-up company, Ludamus Games.

Eric Yurko writes and does board game photography for What's Eric Playing?, a board game review website. When not doing that, Eric also serves on the American Tabletop Awards Committee, a group of U.S.-based media and content creators working to find and promote great board games released in the U.S. each year. You can find him on Twitter @whatseplaying or on Instagram @whatsericplaying.

Ian Zang is the co-founder of Gravitation Games, publisher of Please Fix the Teleporter, and won the Mensa Select award for his game Constellations in 2018. He lives in Michigan with his wife and African Grey parrot.

Rob and Sean Moore have been creating instructional/gameplay/review videos for a couple of years now, often focusing on bringing comprehensive coverage to otherwise overlooked games. They both have experience in playtesting prototype games such as The Butterfly Garden and Indulgence, and they have been judges for the Cardboard Edison Award since 2017. Outside of the gaming hobby, Rob is a historian/teacher and Sean is a filmmaker/musician.

Jamie has been in love with games for their entire life, and has been designing games almost as long. It started as a creative outlet when they were growing up, but their desire to design games for others to play has been a constant in their life. They designed their first hobby games to show to others in 2013, and never stopped.

In 2018, they transitioned from a hobby designer to a professional one when they joined the Boston chapter of the Game Makers Guild. When the pandemic started, Jamie established their game design and self-publishing studio, Triple Rainbow Games. Their development in the world of board games didn't stop there—since then, they've been an active member and playtester of many board game Discord servers, became a moderator and event host for Break My Game, have been hired as a moderator for Protospiel Online, and is now one of the rotating co-hosts of the board game documentary podcast Building the Game!

Jamie lives and breathes board games, and they're thrilled to bring their passion and experience to the Cardboard Edison team!

Dr. Wictz has written academic-inspired articles disguised as practical advice for board game design since 2012. Designers of You Fool. Learn more at dr.wictz.com.

A former scientist, Caezar started Alley Cat Games by creating games for the scientific community before changing course towards creating games that were simply fun. The driving force behind Alley Cat Games, he works tirelessly to make their games a reality.

Kellen Freeman is a librarian, game designer, and maker from central Ohio who was told he's too nice for the internet. In the gaming world, he designs primarily smaller card games, with several completed designs ready for a publisher. He also designs laser-cut game inserts in his free time for fun. He actively works with the Unpub organization, primarily with the Nonepub events. You can find him on Twitter @kellenfreeman, and more information can be found at kellenfreeman.com.

Cara is a content creator that goes by Cara the Blonde Unicorn. Cara reviews and previews tabletop games for various publishers. She also has a series entitled Ladies in Tabletop where she connects with other women in the industry to learn about what they do and their experiences. Cara loves all things board gaming, unicorn, pink, and kitties.

Dan Cassar won the first Cardboard Edison Award with his game The Blood of an Englishman in 2016 and has participated as a judge every year since. His other design credits include the card games Arboretum and Cavemen: The Quest for Fire. When he's not making games, he's designing software. He lives in the Philadelphia area with his three kids.

Matthew Dunstan is an Australian scientist and board game designer, based in Prague, Czech Republic. To date, Matthew has over 25 published games and expansions, the best known being Elysium (nominated for the Kennerspiel des Jahres in 2015), Monumental, and the Adventure Games series. He also designs game experiences for education, including board games for synchrotrons, pop-up escape rooms for festivals, and card games for a film museum, and started a design blog, the Design 100, bringing together expertise from over 30 designers from all around the world.

Nate Murray is the Game Development Manager for CUT.com and is also your number-one fan! You can show him the games you're working on by tweeting him @natecmurray.

Raven McKenzie is a game designer based in Nevada. She draws on her love of food and passion for travel in most realms of her life, from her game designs to her career in international education and her ever-growing reading list. Raven was a recipient of the IGDN Sponsorship in 2020 and is involved with Unpub, where she holds a position on the Advisory Board and frequently assists with digital and in-person playtesting events.

Jeff Johnston, Pair of Jacks Games, designs fun family games, ones you'd love to play with your favorite nieces and nephews. He's worked with publishers like Gamewright, Breaking Games, and Education Outdoors.

Precious Wonah is a boardgame enthusiast from Nigeria.

Marcus Lehner lives in Boston, where he is a proud member of the Game Makers Guild. Marcus has been hooked on making games ever since he made his first one as a wedding gift for his sister (whose husband can be entirely blamed for introducing our family to Catan). Now he designs games to play with his family and friends that try and bring novel and exciting experiences to the kitchen table. When not making games, Marcus can be found working as an engineer, answering absurd hypothetical questions on his podcast, and laughing at his own terrible puns.

Dale holds a Master’s degree in digital game theory and design and has applied that knowledge to the field of tabletop gaming. He has developed games for Mythic Games and Thunderworks Games including Roll Player: Fiends and Familiars, Solomon Kane, Reichbusters: Project Vril and Hel: The Last Saga.

His movement from digital to analog gaming could in part be due to his partner and primary gaming companion, who is blind. The greater tactility of tabletop games allows him to share his passion with greater accessibility. Or at least that’s what he tells himself as he orders an increasing volume of “deluxe” components.

In his spare time, he enjoys creating home-brew expansions as well as providing advice and feedback at his local playtest meetups; of which one published success is FlickFleet by Eurydice Games. He is based in the U.K. with his partner, two children, and black Labrador guide dog, who is the real brains behind his work.

Edwardo Rodriguez, aka Eddie, is a husband, father of two, and is your friendly neighborhood Joatmon (pronounced Yote-Mon) and pin enthusiast over at Breaking Games. He's been a judge for the Cardboard Edison Award for several years. This year, Eddie will be both a first-round judge as well as a finalist judge and is looking forward to seeing what everyone is bringing to the table.

Diane Sauer owns a business restoring old pinball machines and is a game designer and co-owner of Shoot Again Games. Her games include Conspiracy!, Pinball Showdown, Bigfoot vs. Yeti and most recently Born to Serve.

Nick Sauer is a scientist and game designer and has a collection of over 3,000 games. He is co-owner of Shoot Again Games. His games include Mystery Rummy Al Capone, Conspiracy!, Looting Atlantis and Born to Serve. In addition, he has worked on a number of role-playing games.

Tim Blank is a board game and escape room designer residing in Boston, MA. In addition to being a designer, he teaches game design at Northeastern University, is vice president for BostonFIG, and is president of the Game Makers Guild. You can often find him speaking on panels, podcasts, and giving interviews for various board game media outlets (including Cardboard Edison). Board games he has designed include Oh My Gods!, Bumuntu, and the upcoming Yosemite by WizKids! Tim can be found online with the handle @TimMakesGames.

I am Matteo and I am the manager of Volpe Giocosa.

We have been managing this blog with the other guys on the team since 2016, with the aim of spreading the game in all its forms.

We are interested both in the aggregating aspect and in the educational one, passing through mathematical, social and historical considerations, up to the use of the game in difficult contexts.

From the inexperienced player to the more addicted ones, we believe there is a gamer for every box: He or she just needs to be correctly addressed.

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.

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.

Steven Aramini is an avid gamer who also loves game design. He is the designer/co-designer of Sprawlopolis, Agropolis, Circle the Wagons, Tricky Tides, Eternal Palace and Animal Kingdoms, which was chosen as the winner of the 2018 Cardboard Edison Award and was released in 2019 by Galactic Raptor Games.

Jake Frondorf is a software developer working for the NBA's Esports league. He has been writing about board games since 2015, and designing them for even longer. You can find his writing and video essays about board games at CardboardMountain.com. He lives in Brooklyn, where he plays board games nearly every day with his boyfriend. He is infamous for overthinking his turns, and writing dissertation-length articles about the strategy of light filler games.

Maisy Hatchard (@maisykuv) is a Japanese-English board game translator and language tinkerer. She also writes about indie Japanese board games on her site, Japanalogue, and generally aims to link indie designers to overseas shops and publishers. When she isn't making awful puns, she's probably doing contortion or finding ways to consume more sugar. Or glitter. Or both.

Mac McAnally lives in NYC and designs games and plays games and knits and plays games and dances and plays games and makes things and plays games.

David is a UK based designer and developer. Currently most known for his solo mode work, with some 15 titles published to date. David also designs his own games and works extensively as a developer on medium- heavy euro games for a variety of publishers. Titles you may know include Tinners Trail, Chocolate Factory, Undaunted: Reinforcements, Anunnaki, and Distilled.

Mike Bonet is the host of the Who, What, Why game design podcast and the former co-host of the Ninja Vs Pirates Podcast. He's been podcasting off and on for 10 years between both shows. Mike also owns lots of games and generally plays them when he can. He frequently loses to keep things interesting in the game.

Curt Covert is the owner of Smirk & Dagger Games. A veteran of 13 years, his designs include Cutthroat Caverns, Nevermore, and Hex Hex. He is also the inventor behind Crayola 3-D Outdoor Sidewalk Chalk, which won Game Of The Year at NY Toy Fair in 2009.

Tony Tran is an avid board game designer and overall gamer. He started making games in 2014, and it has become a permanent hobby in his life. In addition to his own designs, Tony has started a monthly design group called Game Makers Guild Nashville and the day-long design event Nashville Game Design Fair to foster new designers and grow a community in the Nashville area. Tony won the New Voices Scholarship for Tabletop Network in 2019.

3rd Generation Nerd. Long-time board game enthusiast, board game designer.

Aaron Lim is a designer of tabletop games based in Malaysia. His work ranges from board and card games to story games and tabletop RPGs. Most of his work is self-published at ehronlime.itch.io

Sarah Shipp is a freelance theatre technician out of Dallas. She has been designing board games since 2018 and blogging about board game design since 2019. Her first published games will be announced in 2022.

Also known as "BG613", Motti is an ambitious enthusiast who entered the hobby by playing games over the weekend with his wife. His journey in game design started with creating fanmade content, and led to the creation of one of the largest unofficial fanmade expansion ever made, The Crimson Scales, which is compatible with Gloomhaven. See more information at thecrimsonscales.com.

Matthew has worn many hats in the board game industry since 2015, and is currently the Head of Localization for Scorpion Masqué, Randolph, and Hachette Boardgames. This means his primary task is developing, translating, and adapting, games from French to English. This is his second year judging the Cardboard Edison Award.

Described by San Francisco Weekly as “a hilariously sharp observer, not one of those tired white-guy bellyachers,” Grant was once a collegiate soccer player. He decided to pursue a career on stage instead of on the field, and that decision’s been rewarded by being chosen as a Ne Face in comedy at the Just For Laughs Festival, winning the Laughing Skull Comedy Festival, and being a finalist in the Big Sky Festival.

He’s appeared on Comedy Central, Comics Unleashed, SyFy’s series The Movie Show, and he starred in the Amazon Prime feature film Killer Kate! In addition, he’s been a guest on the nationally syndicated Bob and Tom Radio Show and on numerous popular podcasts including Doug Loves Movies. “Scheduled Fun Time,” his comedy album with 800 Pound Gorilla records, hit number #1 and has been featured on numerous SiriusXM channels.

As well as being a contributing writer for the Huffington Post, the film he wrote and starred in, Interview Date, was eligible for a short film Academy Award. Funny or Die, MSN, Huffington Post, and others are among the sites that have featured Grant’s sketch videos on their home pages. You might also recognize him from a number of national commercials including AT&T, Johnsonville Sausage, CiCi’s Pizza, Sam Adams and more.

His debut board game, Curmudgeon, came out in 2020, published by 25th Century Games. A huge lover of board games, Grant hosts a weekly series on his YouTube channel called Grant’s Game Recs, short and funny videos about good games.

Connor Wake is the designer of the 2019 Cardboard Edison Award winner Umbra Via (now published by Pandasaurus Games). He's a software engineer by day and a game designer the rest of the time living in Oakland, California.

Lauren is a professor of astronomy and physics at Grand Rapids Community College. In the recent past, she has served as co-host of the Playability Podcast, acted as a judge in several competitions including past Cardboard Edison Awards, playtested with local designer groups and at game conventions, and has designed games of her own (for more info, see cgsunit.com/games).

Chris Barrows is the co-conductor of The Tabletop Express - a YouTube channel focused on conversations with board game designers, illustrators, and publishers - and introducing the joy of modern board games to people of all interest levels. A marketer by day, he is also the co-host of the podcast Back On The Hunt - A Supernatural Podcast and a board of trustees for his local library where he co-founded the board game club in 2018. Aside from living each day to the music of David Grohl and the Foo Fighters - he lives in NJ with his wife and two amazing children who inspire him every day.

Ryan Espin is co-conductor of the Tabletop Express, a channel that aims to put the conversation first in board gaming. He has been a board game enthusiast since 2005, is a New Jersey native, and when not board gaming, he’s participating in charity events with his cosplay fan group, the NYC Ghostbusters, working on websites, and spending time with his wife and 3 year old son (another on the way!).

Kristy and Jared have been playtesters for over 10 years, having tested games by hundreds of designers including many of their other fellow judges. And as to date, they have been thanked by more designers than they have left crying.

Matt primarily does freelance design and development as the creative director and founder of Forever Stoked. They also own a game shop/library (Elm City Games), are an adjunct instructor of game design, publish indie weirdness with killjoy and Prettiest Princess, are a Creative Director at Sex+, founded the New Haven Game Makers Guild, organize Fantasticon, and do consulting for corporate, NGO, and institutional clients like Netflix and Yale.

Jeffrey D. Allers is a former architect who now enjoys “the architecture of game design”: creating spaces for others where they interact with the design and with each other. His games have been published around the world since 2008, including Piece o’ Cake, New York Slice, Citrus, Gunkimono, Alea Iacta Est, Pandoria, and Hashi. Originally from the United States, Jeff moved to Germany in 1994, where he continues to live and work with his wife and twin sons.

Matt Yeager (twitter @CrimsynSeraph) has been tinkering with game design since he was little, always trying to improve games like Chess, Risk, Axis and Allies, and various CCGs. Around 2011 he took two games to his first game convention. Well. One and a half. He left the units for his epic (never-been-played) wargame at home. His abilities have only improved since then.

He has been designing in earnest with his wife and design partner, Corinne, since 2015, and their first published game, Exploring Galapagos, is due out this year from Button Shy.

Corinne is a teacher turned homeschool mom of three energetic girls (and a zillion plants that she views like a 4th child) who keep her on her toes. She grew up playing games with her family during every get together. Her husband, Matt, is the one who added more games to the mix, which over time, got her thinking about making games. She has been designing with him since 2015. Their first published game, Exploring Galapagos, is due out this year from Button Shy. She also has some of her own designs in the works.

She has come to realize that she enjoys playing unpublished games more than published ones. She loves that relationship building is the primary goal of the board game community and has really come into her own as a designer because of those relationships, as they have encouraged her and built her up. She wants to pass that on and help others succeed in the industry.

You can find her on Twitter @CoffeeLghtWght.

Thomas Hornemann is a New Jersey-based tabletop game designer, avid playtester, writer, and creative editor. He is one of the three owners and founders of Diner State Games. Currently unpublished, he has won a BostonFIG award for his game Gerrymandering.

Ryan is the founding editor of The Cardboard Republic, a site with an analytical approach to game reviews and a soft spot for indie games.

Erik Herrington is a web engineer by day, indie game designer by night, and is active in the game design world. Soon, you will know his works. Now you will face his judgement.

Chris, Suzanne, Lily & Hana Zinsli are Cardboard Edison.