Earlier this year, we announced our second contest asking board game designers for their best Wallet Game. (link goes here). We changed things up this year by adding another category allowing designers to add up to 10 tokens to their game as something we call Wallet Plus. We receive 61 different games from designers around the world. Over the last month, we whittled down those pitches to 16 Finalists. We would first like to thank all the judges that took time out of their lives to help us determine the finalists (specifically in non-alphabetical order). We couldn’t have done it without them and their over 350 surveys.
Josh Edwards
Benjamin Begeal
Jason Tagmire
Rob Cramer
Benny Sperling
John Du Bois
Suzanne and Chris Zinsli
Chip Beauvais
Daniel Newman
Danny Devine
Dan Letzring
Steven Aramini
Doug Levandowski
Todd Walsh
Mike Mullins
Mitchell Shipman
And now let's check out the finalists!
Note: The descriptions listed below are from the designers and some of these videos are unable to be viewed due to privacy settings. We'll update them here as they become available.
Wallet Plus
Garnet, MT
Nat Levan
Garnet Montana is an action drafting game about a real life boom town that basically disappeared after 15 years. Players choose from 3 actions on every card, Mining gold, trading resources, and constructing the buildings to increase the population before the town burns down. It plays 2 or 3 with 4 tokens per player (I know it stretches the 10 coins a little for more player range). It plays in about 20-25 minutes.
Train Game
Travis Hill
In Train Game, you are a Shareholder in one of three Train Companies expanding westward. Through trading in Shares, increasing the income of the train companies you own shares in, and encouraging expansion in the areas around them, you attempt to end the game with the most money.
Train Game Pitch - Travis Hill
Street Rat
Benjamin Kocher
Set in the fictitious Arabian city of Ahba, a street rat steals food from the marketplace while avoiding the Royal Guard. Moving slowly will ensure the street rat remains hidden, while faster movements threaten to reveal his current location. Each time the street rat steals a food item, his location is revealed, allowing the guard to more easily hunt his quarry. Both the street rat and guard have specific actions to their character, making this game of cat and mouse fast-paced and strategic.
Super Smashing Panda Beach Volleyball - Alpha Edition (DX+)
Richard Hanrahan
The game is a 2 player panda beach volleyball simulation game, that should take no longer than 5 minutes per rally, but can provide variable gameplay from 10-30 minutes of gameplay (or longer if players choose to play sets). I would recommend that the game can be played by anyone, but is perhaps best suited to ages 7+, though is probably better suited to a two player bar game.
Arcane Bakery Clash
Robin Gibson
Players are rival magical bakers, competing in a no-holds-barred duel for kitchen supremacy, facing off with Gingerbread Golems, Boomiringues, Toffeeskin Potions, and Cone of Icecream spells. Cards in Arcane Bakery Clash represent recipes that need to bake before they take effect. Players play the cards face down, and need to wait the correct number of turns in order for the action to take effect. Players have two actions per turn. In addition to putting recipes in and out of the oven, they can turn up the heat to make a recipe cook faster, or peek at a face-down card if they've forgotten how long it needs to cook.
LunaRace
Derik Duley
Pilots, after crash landing on a moon of garbage, must utilize long-term planning, careful resource management, and deft blocking to cultivate necessary parts, repair helpful tools, and fix 4 major ship systems, before their opponent can. LunaRace features upgrade-able resource generation, multi-use cards, and asymmetric turn progression. While this may sound complex, it is quick to learn. Though the format may look limited, there are many different strategies to winning across two different, independent paths to victory. LunaRace: not your everyday garbage collecting, space ship repairing deck builder!
Delivery Program
Dusten McAdams
Get your drones to the delivery areas ASAP. Two test-pilot teams have been tasked to improve the AI algorithms for Mega-Online Mart’s prototype delivery service! Prove that your team can deliver results by getting your drones to the target so they can pick up and ...deliver!
Paradox
John Baluci
In Paradox, two players compete as twisted time travel adventurers trying to earn five powerful Paradox Crystals. Paradox Crystals are earned by forming Paradoxes or by winning Time Clashes.
Traditional Wallet Game
Brooklyn Cool
Aaron Wilson
In Brooklyn Cool, you're a party promoter in Williamsburg Brooklyn employed to get the coolest hipsters to the coolest parties. The more you alternate between promoting popular parties and more underground parties, the more cool points you'll collect. The first promoter to score 15 cool points is crowned Brooklyn's coolest.
Galactic Insurgence
Jon Simantov
For hundreds of generations, the tyrannical Intercosmic Directorate has ruled the galaxy with a titanium fist. Countless planets have been occupied and exploited as the Directorate’s power spreads across the stars.
Recently, a band of resistance fighters known as the Galactic Insurgence has been striking at the Directorate from a hidden base, sabotaging Directorate interests and inspiring local resistance groups to fight back.
Everest Dreams
Nat Levan
In Everest Dreams, players will push their luck through a deck of obstacles, looking for the right equipment, manipulating it as they get acclimatized to the altitude, and relying on their memory to pass through the deck multiple times, while dealing with the cold, deaths, lost equipment, and delays. It plays in about 15 to 20 minutes.
Hot Pursuit
Derik Duley
The card passing, hand trading game of deduction set in 1940s New York. Hot Pursuit is a deceptively difficult, amusingly social, and wonderfully portable card game. It only uses 3 cards per player and takes 10 - 20 minutes to play. It is simple, but not at all easy.
The Perfect Moment
Michael Brown
Time travelers attempt to fix a historical problem by repeatedly reliving it. Win by managing your equipment and matching your cards with the objective cards.
Royal Taste Test
Alex Lemont
Royal Taste Test is a fast-paced programming action game for two players. The strengths of the game are the theme and the light, whimsical play, making it easy to play when you are on the go. In the game, the King has asked seven chefs to prepare unique desserts, however, both players brought the same thing! The players program action cards to swap the desserts around to ensure their dessert is tasted before the other player's dessert.
Tony’s Treasures
Joost Dantuma
A sealed bid auction game, Tony’s Treasures has ask you to win as many items as you can, without spending the most money. You are elite collectors trying to win the most pieces at Tony's illicit garage sale of 1960's objet's d'art. You have unlimited budgets but if you see police 3 times, Tony will call in the largest debt and that player loses.
Potions Class
Owen Wokasch
Potion Class is a two-player wallet game in which players compete to finish three potions first. The game takes about 10 minutes to play and sets up quickly.
Stay tuned for the winners, to be announced June 19, 2017! There will be one first place winner ($100), and one runner up ($50) for each category. We are looking forward to playing them all!