In this video, Fallon interviews Roberta hours before the announcement. We ask Roberta about her game and other design concepts.
We hope you enjoyed the video. Stay tuned next week as we interview Alan who was one of the Canadian Game Design of the Year finalists.
This year's Canadian Game Design Award contest was a great success. We had 18 fantastic entrants and a well deserving winner. Watch below for Brent's inspired speech on the award and naming a winner!
The winner of the 2010 Canadian Game Design Award is Roberta Taylor for her design, Octopus' Garden.
As the winner, Roberta received a $200 prize from FallCon and an offer from Valley Games Inc. to publish her game (which included a $500 advance upon signing the contract)! How great is that?
Game designers, get your entries in for the 2011 edition of Canadian Game Design Award. Rules and forms will be up shortly and the deadline for this year's contest is January 31, 2011. We look forward to seeing all your great designs!
Fallcon 23 was awesome! Here are some of the photos of the best Fallcon to date!
Please enjoy and let us know what you think. Looking forward to seeing you all there at Fallcon 24. Oct. 14-16, 2011!
Days of Steam was first published in 2009 and is available from Valley Games Inc. (This post was originally published on BoardGame-Reviews.com)
Days of Steam:
In this tile laying game, players place tracks and cities creating routes for the delivery of goods. Players who can deliver a variety of goods receive bonus points.
Careful hand management and keeping your engine at the necessary steam capacity will enable you to create the most profitable routes and deliveries.
On their turn, a player may do one of the following actions:
Each of these “micro” actions blends together to create an interesting train-themed game.
Each player has a hand of 3 track tiles. Each is valued at a certain number of “steam” points. By placing a tile, a player generates power to move their locomotive. The player’s locomotive can only have a maximum of 6 steam points.
By choosing to expend steam, players move their trains from location to location picking up and delivering goods.
And finally, a town tile can be placed to provide another delivery location and source of goods. This is helpful because each town can only accept a particular good.
The winner is the one who reaches 13 points first or has the most points when the tile deck is exhausted.
Disclaimer: This game was provided as a sample game by Valley Games Inc.
I have played Days of Steam a few times now and I think it is a fun game. It’s easy enough to teach and plays rather quickly.
I thought this game was interesting in the sense that players were forced to expand the rail network as this was the only way to generate steam to power their locomotives.
If you have been a regular reader of this site, then you know that I enjoy train themed games very much. Days of Steam has a definite train flavor to it but I didn’t like the tile-laying bit.
The tile-laying part was similar to the game Carcassone which I didn’t like that much.
As far as game-complexity goes, Days of Steam is rather easy to learn and teach. There are plenty of examples in the rule book to clarify the game concepts.
I would consider it a nice “gateway” game; a game that introduces people to the genre of train-themed games.
Happy gaming.
FallCon is a boardgame and tabletop miniatures convention for the masses held every fall in Calgary. Consider FallCon a philosophical extension to those fun Friday game nights you spend with family and friends! Against a backdrop of fun and friendly competition, gamers young and old are invited to join us in playing some of the best games available today.
October 14-16, 2011
Commonwealth Hall
3961 52nd Avenue NE #1177
Calgary, AB
Weekend Pass - $50
Family Weekend Pass - $80
Friday Pass - $20 5:30pm-12:00am
Saturday Pass - $30 8:00am-12:00am
Sunday Pass - $20 9:00am-4:00pm