Fastaval has a proud history of fostering creative and innovative board games. Magic Maze, Whirling Witchcraft, Fog of Love, 50 Clues, and Pagan: Fate of Roanoke were all originally developed for Fastaval. Fastaval 2023 will once again showcase the most creative and innovative board games – and we want 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 2023.
When your pitch has been accepted, we will help you make a design plan for your game and provide feedback throughout the design process. We have a network of specialists who can help you with everything from game design, balancing, interaction design, graphical design, and production – depending on the needs of your specific game.
How to submit your pitch
To submit a game-pitch, you must provide us your details and upload a PDF file using the online submission form. Click this link to open the form:
The deadline for submitting pitches for games is Sunday, 21st of August, at 23:59 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 makes your game stand out? We receive more than a hundred submissions – focus on the key aspect of your game that sets it apart.
- 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 some examples of great pitches.
Dates for prototype events to follow
2022
July-August:
Towards the deadline in august, there will be many opportunities to test and get responses on your game. We host several events around Denmark.
We would like to have seen your game live before the deadline if at all practical – it gives us a much clearer picture of what it is about.
September:
As soon as we have received all the pitches, we 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.
2023
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:
Production of games
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
The game design coordinators at Fastaval 2023
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 coordinators for Fastaval 2023 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.
Max Møller
Max designs games for learning and organizational development for the agency Workz for a living. Max plays heavy eurogames with his friends, Pandemic with his wife, and Kingdomino with his children. He likes games that provide complex decisions and a challenging progression with simple rules. He is actively training to keep his AP under control.
Max has made two board games for Fastaval, with 14 years in between, and has also written several role-playing games for Fastaval.
Morten Lund
Morten currently works in test and quality assurance of IT systems, but is looking for ways to get back into Usability and user interface design. He is a sucker for chrome, elegant mechanisms, tons of theme and storytelling and well-designed graphics!
Among the favorites in the collection are: Birds of Prey, Architects of the West Kingdom, The Kings Dilemma, GMT‚ Next War series, and Hey Thats my Fish!
Morten has designed both RPGs and boardgames for Fastaval, the latter with such diverse themes as A board game version of tactical shooter-video games, being an air traffic controller in the late 1980s, and running a racing team at Le Mans
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.