small world contest: results!

I decided to submit the Giant Spiders, Flanking, and Stealthy to the contest. Given that Days of Wonder has already contacted the winners and that I was not contacted, I guess I didn't win anything.

Despite the disappointment of not winning, it was a good exercise to go through. Here are some of my takeaways:

1. Hit lots of ideas quickly, and filter out any that unreasonable or unoriginal.


2. Engage other people that are either interested in the design process or are willing and able to give good feedback.


3. (cliche alert) Think outside the box

Although I have not seen the winning entries, I believe that my submitted ideas were too unoriginal more than that they were untenable. In retrospect, I wish I had submitted Instigating, although I'm not convinced that would have done any better. Hopefully I can objectively compare my entries to the winning entries to determine where I fell short.

I was hesitant to "bother" other people with my ideas as well. I don't like rejection and failure, but I love to get constructive criticism. The problem is that I haven't found a definitive source of it. The people I usually game with may or may not be helpful. The primary problem there is that we find our game-time so limited that we would rather play tried-and-true games than playtest something that may not be fun.

It was definitely a worthy exercise, and I look forward to entering future design contests!