Follow in the footsteps of games like Magic Maze, Whirling Witchcraft, Fog of Love, and 50 Clues - all games that had their premieres at Fastaval, Denmark's largest gaming congress. Fastaval 2024 will once again showcase the most creative and innovative board game designs, and we want just YOUR game to be one of them!
Send us YOUR board game!
We want to give participants at Fastaval amazing and unique experiences and welcome all genres and types of games. Fastaval’s participants are a very diverse crowd, from roleplayers with little board game experience to hardcore eurogamers, from casual gamers to miniature gamers. We welcome all kinds of games, from social games to immersive narratives, creative party games, innovative eurogames, dexterity games, and much more.
Why submit your game to Fastaval?
Your game will be featured and played at Fastaval and will be eligible to win one (or more) of the Otto-awards. Read more about the Otto awards and the categories for board games here.
We systematically gather feedback for you from the players and judges and provide it to you after Fastaval.
Once your game has been accepted, we will provide you with a schedule for the design process up to Fastaval and invite you into a community with this year's other board game designers, where you can spar with each other about everything within game design, balancing, interaction design, graphic design and production – depending on what your design needs.
We will also arrange playtests for your games (in Denmark) leading up to Fastaval.
How to submit your pitch
Submit your pitch along with your information via our online submission-form. Please note that the form is in English, but you are free to choose whether you write your pitch in Danish or English. Click on the link here to open the form:
Deadline for sending in your pitch is Saturday August 26th 2023, at 23:59 (midnight) Danish time (CEST/GMT+1).
If you have any questions, please contact us at gamedesign@fastaval.dk
What should be in the pitch?
In the pitch we want you to focus on the following:
- What is special about your game? We receive many more pitches than we can accept, so you need to highlight exactly what makes your game stand out from the crowd.
- What do you want the players to experience playing the game? Try to describe the key choices, dilemmas, or emotions you want the players to experience playing your game.
- Have you developed a prototype and/or playtested it? What are your current next steps and challenges?
- Please include pictures or sketches of your current prototype, if any. This makes it much easier to understand your game.
Here are a few examples of great pitches.
If your game is selected for Fastaval, you will be invited to a group with all the selected designers of the year. Here you will have the opportunity to share experiences with each other. As part of the community, we will arrange prototype-testing evenings in Copenhagen and Aarhus, where you and the other designers can meet and test each other's prototypes.
2023
July-August:
In the time leading up to the deadline on August 26th, we recommend that you work on your concept, and get it testet with your playgroup. It will often benefit your pitch if you have proven that the core mechanics in your game will work in test sessions..
September:
As soon as we have received all the pitches, we will start the process of reading, debating, and selecting the games we want for Fastaval. Some weeks after the deadline we will be in touch to let you know if your pitch has been accepted or not. If your game is accepted, we will contact you to agree on a specific timeline for your game towards Easter and Fastaval. You will also be invited to our Facebook group for all the designers, where there are rich possibilities for ongoing feedback and advice.
October:
During October, at the latest, we expect your game to have been tested in an end-to-end play-through, the first draft of the rules to have been written, and you should have gotten some feedback.
2024
January:
At this point, the presentation of the game for the program and a poster/front for the game must be done
February:
By now the final version of the rules must be done, so you have the last month and a half available for the production of the physical games themselves
March:
Here you need to build a number of copies of your Fastaval game. Typically you'll need 3-5 copies. We will communicate with you about the exact amount of copies when the time comes.
March/April:
Fastaval!!
May-June:
After Fastaval you will receive feedback from the judges on your game, along with a summary of the feedback forms we have given to the players to fill out after playing your game
New board game designs at Fastaval
Board games have been a part of Fastaval since the beginning. Every year several board games premiere at Fastaval – entirely new, not yet published games, and you can be among the very first who get to play them.
What is special about the board games at Fastaval?
At Fastaval you’ll meet innovative board games that push our idea of what board games are and what they can do. Social games that frame the interaction between players in new ways – like ‘Magic Maze’, where the players must cooperate without any talking. Board games that tell stories, like the double prize winner from 2017 – ‘Z’, where the players must work together to survive in the remnants of a world overrun by zombies.
Games for entirely new audiences – like ‘Fog of Love’, a romantic comedy as a board game, perfect for couples. Games that engage the players in societal challenges – at Fastaval 2018 we had games about climate change, the information war between superpowers, and the treatment of the mentally ill from 1700 to 1950.
World class board games
And we are talking world-class board games premiering at Fastaval.
The winner of the Otto for the best board game in 2015, Magic Maze, was nominated for the biggest award for board games, Spiel des Jahres. Fog of Love from that same Fastaval was the first boardgames Wallmart bought the exclusive rights to in America, and Fog of Love was nominated to the Golden Geek Awards.
A long line of games from Fastaval has gone on to become published or Kickstarted. So it’s not just us who think our board games are pretty great.
A community for creativity driven by volunteers
Fastaval is a creative community where form and expression games can have is explored and experimented with, within our two core areas: role-playing games and board games.
Everything you will experience at Fastaval is carried out by volunteers, i.e. everyone who organizes Fastaval is unpaid and is a participant at Fastaval on equal terms with everyone else, this includes the main organizers, the board game-coordinators on this site, and you as a designer.
As a designer, you are considered a voluntary contributor to Fastaval by virtue of designing a board game experience for the other participants at Fastaval.
How we select games
When we read through the incoming pitches to make the selection for Fastaval, our task is to provide the participants with the best possible potential for great experiences playing games. As such we consider several factors that all influence our decision:
The presentation
Do we understand the description of the game well enough to get a good understanding of the ideas and core concepts of the game?
Quality
Is there good cohesion between game mechanisms and theme? Is it a good game?
Appeal
Does the concept excite us? Do we believe that the game will provide a good experience for the players?
Development potential
There is not a lot of time to design a game from the pitch is approved in September and until the premiere at Fastaval during the easter. It is therefor important that the core elements are, by and large, in place and it seems realistic that the game development can be completed for Fastaval.
That special ‘something’
We have a great love for games that are different and innovative. Maybe games that might not have obvious commercial potential, but that bring something new to the table – in short: It is a game that fits into the spirit of Fastaval and the audience.
Diversity
Finally, we wish to have a broad field of different games, covering the gamut from lightweight to heavy, short to long, from serious to humorous, from both Danish and foreign designers, both experienced and rookies, men, and women.
There are many parameters we try to take into account when selecting the line-up of games for Fastaval from among the submitted pitches. Each year we receive somewhere between 50-120 pitches and we only have room for about 20-24 in the Fastaval program. In the end, we often have to reject many good pitches to ensure the broad selection.
Unfortunately, we are not able to provide explanations for the rejections to everyone who receives a refusal. But keep in mind that a refusal from Fastaval does not necessarily mean that the game is bad, but simply that we did not have room for it in this year's line-up.
Requirements for designed board games
The design competition at Fastaval an amateur competition, with a focus on the design process, innovation and great board game experiences for the participants at Fastaval. The competition does not focus on publishing games or supporting the commercial processes. Therefore, games that have already been released or are about to be released are not interesting, as these games (and their designers) have reached their designgoals without having the Fastaval experience and audience in mind.
Games that are ready for publication, or ready for crowdfunding campaigns, or have signed an agreement with a publisher, cannot enter the competition.
The boardgames coordinators for Fastaval 2024
The coordinators’ task is to ensure the guests of Fastaval have high-quality board game experiences from a broad selection of board- and card games. We want to be an active partner in the design process through sparring and guidance, setting up sub-goals and deadlines, and in particular opportunities to get prototypes playtested continuously along the way. Our goal is to customize the design timeline to the individual game’s needs.
The coordinators also have the task of selecting this year’s field of designer board games from among the submitted pitches based on criteria such as potential, state of progress, theme, and mechanics. The coordinators are not part of the jury who will judge the completed games at Fastaval, and select the Otto winners.
You can contact the board game organizers at gamedesign@fastaval.dk
The boardgames coordinators for Fastaval 2024 are:
Allan A. Kirkeby
Allan has worked in the computer game industry since the 90s as a musician, game designer, producer, and CEO and has contributed to more than 50 game titles. Today he works as an advisor to start-ups in the Danish computer game industry. Allan is a fan of Bloodbowl and Star Wars: Destiny. He regularly plays Formula De with a group of friends. He also plays Zombie Dice, Wingspan, Machi Koro, and Magic Maze with his two sons.
Allan had his first board game Itchy Monkey published in 2018 and hopes to publish more in the coming years. Allan has designed games for Fastaval since 2016.
Bjarke Thomsen
Bjarke has been part of the crew at Fastaval since 07 with only a few breaks. He started in the information point and later as part of the main organizer group.
Currently, he plays Gloomhaven, Heroes of Tenefyr, Aeons End, and Spirit Island as his top 4 games.
He does not enjoy Robinson Crusoe which he thinks is crushingly difficult “for no reason other than to annoy”.
In the real world, Bjarke works in neuroscience at Aarhus University.
Martin Lindhardt
In Martin's home, the dining table has always been the most important piece of furniture, as this is where he meets his friends to play board games. Board games are the preferred activity, as it provides a wonderful mix between socializing and playing, and with a good board game collection, there is a game to suit every situation and mood.
When there is plenty of time to play, Martin prefers the more heavy and complicated games. His favorite games lately have been Gaia Project, Spirit Island, and A Feast for Odin, but it changes all the time.
Martin plays to win, but the battles the game gives along the way are where he finds the game to be the most fun. The interaction between players on how to outmaneuver the others and take the resources right before their turn is where board games are most exciting in Martin's eyes!
Rikke Munchkin Sørensen
Rikke Munchkin first attended Fastaval in 1995 as 100% roleplayer but has over the years discovered the joys of cardboard too. She designed the sardonically humouristic Old Gertrude’s Room for FV2020, and generally has a soft spot for the quirkier themes that tell a good story. But she also thoroughly enjoys the more classic games and currently plays a lot of Wingspan, Gloomhaven, Pandemic, and Doppelt So Clever.
It is more important to her that the process of playing is a pleasure than who wins in the end.
In everyday life, she works as an audiologist in a hearing research group at DTU which luckily also involves a decent amount of nerds.