2012 Results

Congratulations to everyone who participated in Game Chef 2012. Here’s the results of peer-reviewing and details about the final judging process.

The True Winners

Everybody who has completed a game — and, really, also those folks who started something but couldn’t quite finish on time — if you’ve learned something in the process and felt some connection to the other chefs and their games, you’ve won Game Chef in every way that matters. And that’s not just comforting bullshit, but actual honest fact.

A couple anecdotes demonstrate this: All the Game Chef games you’re most likely to have heard of were not winners and most of them weren’t even finalists. Additionally, I gave a pretty critical review to one game when I was a guest judge for Game Chef 2005; that game was The Shab-Al-Hiri Roach and its designer has now won the Diana Jones Award twice.

So first let’s congratulate all the games that are not finalists or runners-up. Nearly 50% of these were one reviewer’s favorite game, which is pretty dang awesome, and these games are odds-on favorites to be more successful and make more money than any of the other games!

Rock on and please keep designing and playing! This is what it’s all about!

The Runners-Up

These are the games that were highly recommended by their reviewers, but not enough to be declared finalists. If history is any guide, these games will probably be less successful than the previous group, but more successful than the winners! Congratulations!

• Ultramondo, accetti la sfida? [Ultraworld: Will You Rise to the Challenge?] by Davide Losito
• Ultimo Viene il Coyote [Last Comes Coyote] by Daniele Di Rubbo
• Figli del Sole [Children of the Sun] (+ scheda + tabella) by Lavinia Fantini
• Keepers of the Lantern by Seth Ben-Ezra
• Aokigahara by Julia Ellingboe
• Crash / Lanterns of the Dead by Nick Wedig
• Lantern’s Legacy by Jason Pitre
• <meta>forum</post> by Michael S. Miller
• ‘inkadia by Lester Ward
• Getting There in Time by Dan Maruschak
• Burning Opera by Vicenzi Giacomo
• The Last Word by Orion Canning
• Coyotes in Dark Alleyways by Peter Borah (PeterBB)
• This Match is Scheduled for One Fall by Nathan D. Paoletta
• Our Last Best Hope (+ death cards) by Mark Truman / Magpie Games

The Finalists

And finally our finalists, whose games will be reviewed by myself and original Master Chef Mike Holmes to determine this year’s winner.

• Novanta minuti [Ninety Minutes] by Matteo Turini
• L’Ombra del Cambiamento [The Shadow of Change] by Luca Ricci
• Big Chiefs by Liam Burke
• Lies of Passage by Lucas ‘Tor’ Garczewski
• Last Chance to Tell the Tale of Coyote and Medicine Man by Bryan Hansel
• A Small Piece of the Sun (+ sheet + supplement) by Keith Stetson
• Epistolary: A Game of Monsters and Letters (+ supplement) by Ed Turner
• Monsters of Glam by Matthew Sullivan-Barrett
• Liminal by Robert Bruce
• The Eleventh Hour (+ characters + cults) by Mike Olson
• The Simurg by Chris Edwards

Final Judging

The judges comments and ultimate winner will be declared shortly. In the meantime, enjoy another series of Alumni Reports with former Game Chef participants on the blog.