Hey Folks,

We're super psyched to bring you Game Chef one final time on the Forge. Our team this year, aside from me, includes Mike "Original Master Chef" Holmes and Joe "Master Sous Chef" Mcdaldno, the latter of whom will be taking over as Master Chef in 2013, after the world ends.

Regular updates about the competition this year will continue to be posted on the Game Chef website / blog, where we've already started a series of "Alumni Reports" with past Game Chef participants, updating everyone on the current state of their games and offering advice to both veterans and newcomers.

We scheduled this year's competition specially so we could make it happen before the Forge goes into hibernation and there are a few Forge-inspired "Easter Eggs" in this year's Game Chef as a tribute to what Ron, Clinton, Vincent, and everyone else has created over the past decade+.

If you're new to Game Chef, you might want to check out both the about page on the website and the guidelines for last year's competition, to get a better sense of how it works.

The rules and guidelines for this year's contest will be posted the afternoon of Friday, April 6, so that folks in other time zones aren't at too much of a disadvantage. Until then, hang out with your fellow chefs, enjoy the "Alumni Reports" on the blog, and get ready for Last Chance Game Chef.

Hugs and kisses, your MC,
The Master Chef

I'm super exited, as always. Just one thing I wanted to check though;

What's the time zone for the contest? Helps us from different timezones to know when to expect the rules and around what time the contest starts.

Nice work as always, let's have a nice contest this year as well!

I'm in Seattle, if that helps. I'm happy to be flexible with folks in other time zones; just let me know what I can do.

I'm very excited about this contest. I've learned a lot since last year, and I'm ready to make a strong showing.
My entry last year: http://www.goodideagames.com/otherprojects/wyrdsisters

What sort of layout is expected here? I'm pretty certain I can write a cool game, but I know ZERO about layout/graphic design/etc. So if it makes your eyes bleed to read it, does it still count?

No layout is expected or required. Game Chef 2008 actually required all submissions as TXT files to level the playing field, so that's totally acceptable if you want to keep it simple. I actually encourage folks who aren't experienced in graphic design to do as little as possible, since it takes up a lot of time and distracts from the real purpose.

Looking forward to participating again! I've learned absolutely nothing about game design since last year, so I'm hoping to be consistent, if nothing else.

Okay, well that's great news. I've seen some intimidatingly pretty games come out of Game Chef, so it's nice to know that no judgments are actually based on layout/graphic design as such.

This looks fun.

I'm in.

Hello there ^^
This is my first post on The Forge, for the fact I purpousely made this account for Game Chef 2012.
It's the first time I try, I hope to come up with a competitive idea.
Wish good luck to everyone ;)

Should be fun. I'll give it a go.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm very honored to have been invited back for this event. From the look of things, it should be a great time! I'm looking forward very much to what everybody brings to the table this year.

Good Luck!

Mike

Gryffudd wrote:
Should be fun. I'll give it a go.

I was going to give it a try last year and chickened out. I am definitely in this year. no backing down this time.

So the basic rules and theme are posted (no ingredients yet).

Hi Jonathan,

I have a question about the Theme.  In years past, it's generally been something that wound up most heavily reflected in the game's content and fictional topics.

This year it sounds like the ingredients are intended for that purpose, with the Theme being a practical constraint on the form of play.

Is that correct?

Also, what does "only played once" mean?
a) one session per group
b) any number of sessions, as long as it ends and is then not played again by that group
c) one group ever

I can design a one-shot game, but I'd have no idea how to include (b) and (c) as relevant, key features of a game.

(I tried to post this on the WordPress site and nothing happened.  Not an error message; nothing.)

Thanks,
-David

You have to interpret the theme boldly, David. Any of your options can work, as long as you as the designer believe in it. It is true that traditionally Theme has usually pertained more to content than structure, but ultimately it is just the topic of discourse, and there have been very structure-oriented challenges. I am myself inclined to interpret that Theme strictly simply because it's more challenging that way: design the game as if it were only going to be played once. I don't think this is particularly impossible, they do this all the time with larps.

Just throwing this out there for anyone as technology-illiterate as myself: OpenOffice allows you to make your doc a pdf, but it isn't under the "save as" menu, it's lower down, under "Export as PDF." Just discovered this two minutes ago and thought I'd share, just in case I'm not the only one. ;-)

The Theme interpreted as a strict restriction for the duration of the game reminds me of Game Chef 2006. The Theme back then was Time, and there was also another mechanical restriction: the game had to be playable in a set amount of time or sessions. This year the Theme seems more vague, which leads me to believe that it doesn't necessarily imply those restrictions.

But then again, the Theme is to be interpreted by the designer, so I can imagine some people going for the more stricter and some others to the more vaguer ideas.

Hi David,

I have to approve comments from people who haven't had their comments approved before. It limits the chance for spam.

As everybody's saying above, the theme is always pretty vague (in the past: Simulationism, Fantasy, Journey, etc.) to keep it from being yet another "ingredient" that you have to include, so you're free to interpret it however you want.  "One-shot" is a relatively straightforward way to interpret it and that's totally fine. I was talking with Nathan Paoletta earlier and we agreed that a lot of one-shots would probably come out of this contest, which is great and a good way to focus things for people relatively new to game design.  But there could be other valid interpretations and I don't really have any intention of clarifying it much more, since part of Game Chef is being open to where the theme and ingredients lead you, not closing off potential options.

So: do as thou wilt!

David wrote:
Also, what does "only played once" mean?
a) one session per group
b) any number of sessions, as long as it ends and is then not played again by that group
c) one group ever

I can design a one-shot game, but I'd have no idea how to include (b) and (c) as relevant, key features of a game.

Ingredients are up. Good luck, folks!  Also, let's hope Vincent's script doesn't crash!

Okay, gotcha. 

Good call on the "reveal secrets once", Nick.  I actually have some game projects that could have worked like that.

Jonathan, the idea to use 4 random Forge threads as ingredients is brilliant!

Hey, can we enter several games? How about one as a sol effort, and one as part of a team?

Yup. Multiple games are cool. Eero submitted three in 2004.

I've updated the submissions guidelines to make it clear that you can submit games anonymously.

Hello there Mr. Walton, I have a question for you:

I'm italian, I want to participate to "Pummarola Ediscion", still I'd love to go for the English version of the Game Chef competition, too.

1. May I submit a game in Italian and another, different game in English?
2. May I submit a game both in English and Italian, definining immediately which version is eligible for voting and which one is just for reviewing?

Thank you ^^

You can submit multiple games if you want, in any combination of English + Italian, and all of them are eligible to win.

I don't know if they're done processing but I count 75 games in the submission thread.  That's pretty damn impressive.  I look forward to reading them all.

Not sure how you're counting. I got an even more impressive 93 (which would be a new record)!

Posted a quick update on where we stand now. More info coming soon.

Congrats to all who finished.  Looks like it was close to 90 games submitted this year.  At first I didn't think it would be half that many.  Jon is that a record for submissions?

I have a question for you, Mr. Walton: is eligibility "self-defined"? how do we know a game is eligible for vote in peer reviewing? Because (like in my case) I asked for the Master Chef's help to define if my english entry was eligible or not.

And really, great work. I can't imagine how is difficult to manage all those games.
And congratulations to every participant, too ^^

Just officially opened peer-reviewing.

So I went ahead and ran the results of peer-reviewing and voting, despite still missing a couple votes. At this point, the remaining votes will either add a new runner-up or move a runner-up to a finalist, and we will deal with that when and if it happens (only a slight chance of either, I think).

Game Chef 2012 Preliminary Results

Congratulations to all participants and I look forward to begin reviewing the finalists with original Master Chef Mike Holmes. There's a few games that didn't make it to the finals that I want to look at too, because they caught my attention, but that'll have to wait for now.