Wednesday 1 January 2014

And the winner of the Harder than Granite 24 hour competition is...

Heist Aces by Fred Bednarski

A Pocketmod game about running a high tech heist that uses an innovative combination of Post-It notes and playing cards. System and setting are intertwined, it uses no numbers and is in a single pocket mod (counting for kudos only). My only concern is that it is difficult to understand on the first read through but then I really wanted to read it through again.

It ticks all the boxes: uses no numbers whatsoever, is in pocketmod format, professionally laid out, includes extras such a front page, A4/Letter format and character sheet. It is laid out in a style that adds to the flavour of the whole game - which is really difficult in a pocketmod format. An email has blasted out of the Google mail cannon to Fred with a £30 Amazon voucher to follow. Congratulations, Fred!

Close call

There were 20 games to whittle down (full list coming) and Jason "Chainsaw Aardvark" Kline found ourselves at the same two. Heist Aces and Flask Full of Gasoline by Dyson Logos. We both loved Flask too for it's gritty humour and drinking game antics. We had to split hairs between the two games, the only divider being that there were no reference to any numbers in Heist Aces at all. That's it! Sadly, I can't spot for two lots of prize money.

Honorable Mention

Geoff Lamb, who gave us four (yes, 4) wonderful games under very difficult circumstances. Thank you for entering with so much gusto, Geoff!

Commiserations to all the other entrants. The Monkeys at 1KM1KT whooped with poo-flinging thrill at the inventiveness of the entries. The challenge was insanely tough this year and I am gleeful that so many stepped up to it. Well done to you all.

3 comments:

Von Bednar said...

Thank you. It was my first ever fully finished design and to have it recognized is a great honor indeed.

I understand that the game feels a bit complicated, unfortunately I was short for space to give examples. But, never fear - I am planning on expanding the game in the near future to make it more accessible.

I would like to tip my hat to the other competitors, I have read all the games and loved many of them. Given time, I will probably post a quick thoughts/reviews about them.

Thank you once more, and you can be sure that the prize money will go towards my game acquisition disorder ;)

Andy Hauge said...

Excellent! It was fun to participate in this, especially making such a small and weird 24-hour RPG.

I probably won't wind up revising it, but I will absolutely be re-using the dice mechanic from my entry (Keeton Journeys) in another project that I'm slowly fashioning together.

Unknown said...

This was a blast. While I won't revisit most of them, I have too many plans for Super Robot Go. I will probably be rewriting that one until the next 24-hour competition.