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The Theme for Game Chef 2017 is Borders.

Borders are critical places, by definition. Through borders, we draw lines and separate, but at borders, we cross, we discover, we meet. Some borders are highly official, like the ones for the countries we live in, and other are informal and unspoken, like the silent rules of a community. Some borders are physical and undeniable, like a mighty river, and some are subtle and shifting, like the boundaries of our comfort zone. We use borders to protect ourselves and to shape our identities, but borders can also restrict and stifle, oppressing and separating unfairly. Some borders we protect with all our strength, other we challenge and try to change. We cross borders to discover, to learn and grow, to challenge our assumptions, and we cross them again to come back home.

For Game Chef 2017, we invite you to design games that explore the concept of borders and boundaries, how we draw them, why we cross them, and what we find beyond.

The ingredients for Game Chef 2017 are Yarn, Echo, Smoke, and Cut.

Game Chef 2017 will run from June 30 to July 10. The contest begins just after midnight New Zealand time on June 30 and ends just before midnight Hawaii time on July 10, to give everyone the maximum amount of time to work on their games. If you’re excited about this year’s competition, follow our Google+ community, Facebook page, or Twitter to hear the announcement of this year’s theme and ingredients.

And for your reference, a quick chart of starting and ending times around the world:

Dallas, USA/London, UK — Game Chef, the yearly international game design competition focusing on analog game design, is excited to announce a new leadership team beginning in 2017. Alberto Muti and Alexandra Zanasi are the new Global Coordinators. Alberto and Alexandra have both served as Community Coordinators for Italian Game Chef, so they have both the experience and passion to manage the international competition beginning this year.

Game Chef Global Coordinators are responsible for creating themes & ingredients every year, and liaising with the coordinating teams for each participating language.

Josh T. Jordan and Rachael Storey, who served as Game Chef Global Coordinators for 2015-2016 are excited to pass the torch to this new team, and will maintain a behind-the-scenes role as part of Alberto and Alexandra’s advisor council. Josh and Rachael are particularly excited that the new leaders are from outside North America. After several years, this international competition will, for the first time, have leaders who aren’t American.

“There’s no way for Rachael and me to predict,” says Josh T. Jordan, ” I have no idea what amazing themes and ingredients Alberto and Alexandra will bring to Game Chef 2017, but I’m very excited to find out. Rachael and I have known these two for a few years now, and we’ve been impressed with their leadership in the Italian Game Chef community, so we know that we’re leaving the international community in good hands.”

“Out of the Cocoon” by Ivan Lania, winner of the Italian language Game Chef competition.

Check out all of our great language community winners that have been translated into English:

• “Agoraphobia,” By Florencia Paula Müller & Lucas Hyon (Spanish)
• “Out of the Cocoon,” by Ivan Lania (Italian)
• “Focus,” by Alexander Carneiro (Portuguese)
• “Matching Hearts,” by Damien «Rahyll» C. (French)
• “Beyond Our Walls,” by Robert Bohl (English)

Congratulations to Ivan, and to everyone who participated in Game Chef 2016. Keep an eye on this space for announcements about Game Chef 2017!

Beyond Our Walls, by Robert Bohl!

Congratulations to all of our participants this year, and we can’t wait to see what all of you make of your games moving forward.

Your Game Chef 2016 English-language finalists, chosen based on peer review by all particpants, are:

Beyond Our Walls (Robert Bohl)
Clicks & Hums & Sirens & The Sun (Oli Jeffrey)
Impact Winter (Daniel Adams)
Intellectual Property (Jay Sylvano)
Last Transmission (Piers Connolly)
Making History (Rose Docherty)
Reach Escape (Taylor Dayton)
Rest (Emily Griggs)
Uncanny Valley (Stephen Dewey)

This year we had 93 games submitted. The peer reviews on the games were overwhelmingly positive, and we congratulate all of our participants on their hard work in creating a game. We can’t wait to see what comes of all of the games from this year’s contest.

The English-language winner will be announced on July 22.

This year’s theme is: Technology

Pervasive and transformative, technology has always played a role in the evolution and transformation of humanity, ranging from the beneficial to the catastrophic. For this year’s game chef, we invite you to explore, question and discuss the impact of technology on games and on human society. How can you represent technological change in a game? What about the social and anthropological repercussions? What present has technology led us to, and what future is it building?

We also invite you to explore the role of current and future technologies in game design: how can they complement, expand and transform analog gaming? How can new tools enrich classic game practices, and what entirely new doors do they open? When a smartphone is as common as a six-sided die, and gamers meet over videochat and apps as often as they meet over maps and miniatures, what makes a game analog? Your game may use whatever props or technology you deem necessary. However, we don’t require reviewers or judges to actually playtest the games in order to judge them. They can judge your work on its creativity and playability alone. If your game requires a piece of technology, the more common that technology is, the more likely reviewers are to actually playtest your game

Game Chef has a storied legacy of fostering forward-looking, innovative game design. This year, we invite you once again to push boundaries, blaze new trails, and show us the technological future of analog gaming.

This year’s four ingredients are: alarm, dance, sketch, and sunlight

Incorporate 2-3 of the ingredients into your design. Try to incorporate the ingredients as centrally as you can, as part of the premise or the rules or however else makes sense to you. A passing reference is okay if that’s all you can come up with, but we suggest really drawing strongly on the ingredients. Like the theme, you’re free to interpret these ingredients in whatever way you want.

For example, the 2004 ingredients were ice, island, dawn, assault, which ended up inspiring games like The Mountain Witch (climbing icy Mount Fuji to assault the witch’s fortress), The Dance and the Dawn (try to find your true love at an island social gathering, hoping that — when dawn breaks — you don’t end up with the one that has a heart of ice), and Polaris (arctic elves struggle against themselves and a demonic assault, with the dawn finally coming for the first time in hundreds of years).

Check out the full rules and get working on your designs!

One week until Game Chef! I hope everyone is excited for this year’s competition. Game Chef 2016 will run from June 4 to June 12. Like last year, we’re starting it at midnight New Zealand time and ending at midnight Hawaii time to give everyone the maximum amount of time to work on their game. That means the dates are:

START:
New Zealand: June 4, midnight (start of day)
UK: June 3, 1 PM
USA (Eastern): June 3, 8 AM
USA (Pacific): June 3, 5 AM
Hawaii: June 3, 2 AM

END:
New Zealand: June 13, 10 PM
UK: June 13, 11 AM
USA (Eastern): June 13, 6 AM
USA (Pacific): June 13, 3 AM
Hawaii: June 12, midnight (end of day)

We will announce the theme and ingredients at the start time here on the blog, as well as on twitter (@game_chef) and our Google Plus community.

Game Chef 2016 will run from June 4th to 12th. Stay tuned to this space for more information about the 2016 contest as it approaches! If you are interested in coordinating a Game Chef competition in a language other than English, please contact us at gamechefglobal@gmail.com — we’re always looking to expand the number of language communities.

… is The Voyage of the Dragonfly by Guillaume Clerc! Congratulations to Guillaume, all of our language community winners, and to everyone who participated in Game Chef 2015. And keep an eye on this space for the announcement of Game Chef 2016 next year!