JESS: Jugar x Jugar 2008

Jugar x Jugar is a little game fair, inside the bigger Granollers commercial fair, but it already is an important meeting point for Spanish gamers, and its biggest light is the game design conquest.

In the second edition of this award, there are two winners:

- Civicards, by Alberto Corral - first prize.

- 22 manzanas (22 apples), by Juan Carlos Pérez - second prize.

In Jugar x Jugar, from May 1 to 4, Roberto Fraga was the guest game author. There were Scrabble, Carcassonne or Circus Maximus tournaments. There were shops, many games to play and people from Ayudar Jugando to help the people.

Jugar x Jugar fair

More Jugar x Jugar games

Circus Maximus 3-D, by Jordi Roca

Roberto Fraga, star guest

Ayudar Jugando people

Carcassonne Spanish national tournament

There was a stand with the finalist games of the design conquest inside the big commercial tent. On Saturday evening, we had the award ceremony of the game design conquest there.

Award ceremony

The stand with the finalist games

Both winner games exposed

Oriol Comas, director of the game fair

The winner was Civicards by Alberto Corral. It is a card game about civilizations, from classic age to last century. It is a gamer’s game and its central idea is to choose from a big maze all the cards you want to play later. Each power card has a power deck, with cards from 1 to 5, in seven different categories (culture, army, technology, economy, etc.). There are some civilization cards on the table, in the same seven categories than the power cards. Each civilization card has a different effect: money, victory points, etc. You can see what cards you want to get and consequently, you choose your power cards from your personal deck. When everybody has the power cards for this turn, each player roll 3 dice… The sum is the number of points you can use in the turn. If you chose very big cards and you get low dice sum, you can not play them and you loose the cards. The money can be used to increase your dice sum. Using your dice points, you put your power cards under the civilization cards you want to get (the power cards you can not use are out of the game). Each civilization card goes to the player with the higher sum of power cards on it. All this intelligent mechanism is complicated with many civilization cards, and combinations and interactions between them going through the ages. There are more sophisticated rules, but I think this is enough to understand what kind of game we are talking about.

Playing the game

The main core of the game is the critical decision about how many cards to take, the 3 dice rolling, to choose where to put your cards, etc. Some players didn’t like the hazard in the game and that was subject of discussion in Granollers - but I think they dont’ understand well how the games works. Appart of these mechanisms, the game is only effects written on the cards.

Alberto explaining his game

Alberto Corral is the game author. He wants to improve Civicards even more, so we’ll see what can he get from a game already very good (the only real problem is that it is too long, more than 3 hours…). He has created other games, some of them really interesting, and we hope he can publish a game professionally soon. He is a lover of computer design, and his prototypes always look very nice as you can see on the pictures of Civicards.

If in Civicards the core original idea is convoluted with many other mechanism, in 22 manzanas (22 apples) the idea is naked.

22 manzanas is a game for two persons. There are 24 pieces with red or green apples, with 1, 2, 3 or 5 apples on each piece in one colour. There is also a piece with a farmer. All the pieces are putted randomly in a 5x5 grid. On your turn, you move the farmer (not diagonally) and must take an apple piece. You store the green apples in a plate, and the red apples in other. Now is the turn of the other player. If you get exactly 11 red apples and 11 green apples, you win. If you get more than 11 apples in any color, you lost.

Juan Carlos Pérez and 22 manzanas

A really simple game, made only with 25 pieces. It works fine, it is fast and you finish the match thinking you want to try again. The author, Juan Carlos Pérez, had the idea about this game time ago, and it has been developed to simplicity. We can imagine this game published easily, be lucky!

The winner authors: Alberto Corral & Juan Carlos Pérez

About the other 8 finalist games – there were goods games there -, I will show you the pictures:

Next year, more new games in Granollers (and more info about the 2008 fair, in Spanish)

¡Nos jugamos!

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