Thousand Year Game Design Challenge - January Update

The Thousand Year Game Design Challenge
The first month of the challenge went even better than hoped. We had plenty of media coverage on Purple Pawn, Wired/GeekDad, Tor, Lautapeliopas (Finnish), Abre o Jogo (Portuguese), Discovery: Treehugger, The Star, and UnBeige. There are a handful of discussions on BoardGameGeek, Reddit, Inventori di Giochi (Italian), and Gameful. But most importantly, we got some very interesting game entries you ought to check out.

PortalPortal by Kenny VenOsdel
A hex-based abstract capturing game where the board position decides which pieces are allowed to capture, which pieces can be captured, and what spaces they can move to. Also, players alternate the ability to move once or twice.


NumeriaNumeria by Lloyd Krassner aka Warp Spawn Games
This game is played on a chessboard with thirty-six tiles numbered 1-36. Win by forming rows and columns sharing mathematical relationships. These can be as simple as a consecutive series of numbers or advanced as a Fibonacci sequence.


Public SecretsPublic Secrets by Joshua Curtis Kidd
How do you tell a friend your secret password when in a public conversation? You can’t whisper in their ear. You can’t write something down, unless you also show everyone. In interesting experiment and so far the only entry not played on a board.

A great lineup so far. I love seeing two-player abstracts get some attention, of course, but I'm eager to see games stretch boundaries like Public Secrets. Here's some food for thought if you're still thinking about your entry. A few little challenges that might get your brain-juice flowing.

A game played with just hands.
A game played with facial expressions.
A game that teaches morals and ethics.
A game played with your eyes closed.
A game to be played as loudly as possible.
A game made with recycled materials about recycling materials.

Hope any of those inspires you to make your own game to last a dozen lifetimes. Go to ThousandYearGame.com to find out how you can to join the challenge!

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