The second of my game design competition entries

(an insight into why it lost)

So this summer I entered 2 board game design competitions. In my last post I talked about the first one. I want to share the story behind the second, how I approached it, and the lessons I learned for next time.

Now, let’s get into the second competition: the GenCant 2022 Game Design Challenge.

Unlike The Board Game Workshop’s challenge (the first competition I entered), which let folks submit any kind of game, this competition specifically requested 18 card flip-n-write games. The competition worked with Button Shy Games, an awesome company that exclusively produces wallet-sized games. Also unlike The Board Game Workshop’s challenge, I didn’t have a work-in-progress design to submit.

This was midway through the summer, while I was still twiddling my thumbs waiting to hear back from the first competition. To keep myself occupied and to work on my design skills I thought it would be nice to give this one a shot.

At first, I didn’t have any clue what to design. I wanted to make a game with a traditionally feminine theme because I thought it’d be fun and a bit different from other submissions. I was brainstorming hard for a few days, but no dice.

Then I got COVID (I hadn’t had it before! It sucked!) and was trapped in my childhood bedroom. Bored out of my mind, learning to code, watching too much Jane the Virgin, and lazing around, I knew a game would occupy myself. I felt like I was thinking too hard about what would work, and I was stuck in a rut for a bit.

Part of the difficulty with this competition was that the mechanics were already specified. This ended up being both a blessing and a curse. If it hadn’t been for the specific request for a flip-n-write game with so few cards, there’s no way that I would’ve come up with what I did. (And it’s been a lot of fun working on it, so I’m ultimately grateful for the project’s niche ruleset.)

But before I figured out what I wanted the game to be about, part of the struggle was that the best games (for the most part) intertwine the game’s theme and core mechanics effortlessly. This is a design principle I learned pretty recently in the Kobold Guide to Board Game Design. (I’d 100% recommend checking it out if you like board game design.)

All the games I was thinking about had a cool theme but the theme didn’t mesh with the flip-n-write mechanic at all. For those who don’t know, flip-n-write games involve flipping over cards and writing results from the card flips onto a score pad or a dry erase board. They’re super similar to roll-n-writes, which are the same but with dice instead of card flipping.

But being trapped in a room with COVID for a few days, I eventually found a solution to my predicament. I was trying to think what would be a fun way to focus on the flip-n-write aspect. I was a bit inspired by the game Welcome To, the only flip-n-write I’ve been able to play so far. For a long time I wanted to make a game about purses (to involve a feminine theme in the game), and I still hope to make a purse-themed game soon. But once I temporarily abandoned that idea, I thought about manicures.

There aren’t any popular games about manicures, I thought. Unsurprisingly, there aren’t many female designers out there and gaming is pretty male-dominated. I realized it’d be fun to play a game where you’re drawing a manicure onto someone’s hands, but I figured it might not sell too well if the hands were normal, boring hands.

And that’s when it hit me: I should make the game alien-themed. Lots of folks love space-themed games, which is unsurprising when we think about how many huge games involve space—Terraforming Mars, The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine, Race for the Galaxy, Twilight Imperium: Fourth Edition, and Cosmic Encounter are only a few that come to mind.

So, I set out to make Galaxy Nail Salon, an 18-card flip-n-write game in which players attempt to give an alien the best manicure they can, where players flip cards to randomize what options can go on the alien’s hands. Here’s the sell sheet for the game:

If you’ve seen anything else on this blog, this sell sheet looks eerily similar to my sell sheet for Mining for Emerbelles, a space-themed social deduction game (I guess I’m kind of a sucker for space-themed games). Fortunately the template works well for both games, and I’m a work-smarter-not-harder kinda gal, so this was pretty convenient.

So I spent a few days crafting the best prototype I could with limited resources. I took some old Bicycle cards and modded them to work for the game, and I made the very first iteration of the manicure sheet (the white sheets of paper featured on the sell sheet above). Fortunately, my family was kind enough to playtest, and we were able to do so virtually while they were huddled around the kitchen table and I was FaceTiming from my room.

The first playtest went surprisingly well. The subsequent ones did pretty well, too. Here are the main two struggles I had with this prototype:

1. The manicure sheet has gone through multiple size evolutions. The bigger the sheet gets, the better for the most part, because it’s hard for folks to draw details on a smaller sheet of paper.

2. The scoring system has changed a fair amount from playtest to playtest. I weighted some things too heavily at first and now it’s pretty balanced.

So, if the game turned out pretty well, how’d it fare in the competition?

It didn’t win. (*Cries a single tear.*)

Here were the two reasons why I think it didn't make the cut:

1. My pitch video for Galaxy Nail Salon, similar to my pitch for Mining for Emerbelles in the other competition, was pretty goofy and not as professional as it could be. I’m honestly not mad about the low-budget look, but it could still use a reshoot.

2. I didn’t focus closely enough on the game specifications. For the game, since ButtonShy was offering to publish the winning submission, the score sheet needed to be quite small to match the brand’s theme. Unfortunately, I hadn’t scaled my game to the rules specifications from the get-go, so when I shrunk the manicure sheets to fit on the last day I knew the game would probably be worse off for it.

Here are the lessons I’ve learned so far from this game design process:

• I really need to work on my video pitches.

• I’m in the process of reworking and resubmitting the game to other publishers. This is my first time using The Game Crafter to publish a prototype, so I’ve been struggling with some of the software and visual-components of the games.

That’s all I’ve got for now, and I’ll keep giving updates on the progress of seeking publishers and game development for Galaxy Nail Salon!

Have a great day and play some games,

Jules