As it seemed in the previous post, Space Soup did not fare that well in the TGC’s Community Anthology Challenge. I was expecting a bit better position than 67/89, but I guess this where you get with no-marketing, a-nothing-that-special-concept, and effectively nonexisting theme. Still, the view/vote -ratio seemed to be 15 to 1, which was something that few designers of better-faring entries posted afterwards.
In the TGC’s Mint Tin Challenge held earlier I had a rather strong mechanical concept (but a bit lacking in the game itself) known as Master of Keys. This one had probably the view/vote -ratio of 9 to 1. I did absolutely nothing to promote this one… and the experiment did give me the confidence that if one does have a strong concept and a very good game, the design would get through the popular voting phase even without promoting.
One other missing story ending is the Board Date Project (which the organizers are now running a second time): nothing happened with Staking the Throne. The video was viewed few times (less than average) while those who did check the video watched to the end. Some interesting statistics were shared on boardgamegeek regarding what kind of games got the most interest, and that would seem to indicate that children/party/family games have the most appeal.
And that’s it… well… I do have an entry in an ongoing contest, but one is supposed to be less vocal about one’s participation. But in the meantime, I’m pondering on enrolling into 7th Roll & Wrote Game Design Contest on BGG. I have this idea of rockets moving in an ever-speeding fashion, in which players try to desperately steer their rockets (and obstruct others) through checkpoints. I did some initial testing a while ago, but there were few bigger issues and some other project deadlines… so this was but on a back burner. But I think now it’s time to draw the line.
