81 entries. EIGHTY-ONE ENTRIES.

Whew!

Thank you so much to all of the bold, talented, and hard-working contestants who entered the GenCant Roll And Write Contest this year. The judges had a ton of fun playing through your creative dice and paper games. After hours of play testing, hours of discussion and debate – we’re excited to announce the winner of of the #GenCantRnW.

CONGRATS JAMES O’CONNOR and WELCOME TO DINO WORLD

(here’s a sneak peek of the cover art sketch from Beth Sobel!)

Here are a few words from James…

It is such an honor to have Welcome to DinoWorld selected as the official game of GenCant!  Especially with so many amazing looking entries, the judges must have had a really tough time narrowing it down!

It’s hard to imagine a game that has gone through more of a dynamic change than Welcome to DinoWorld. WTDW started about 4 years ago as a massive park simulation game with 3D structures, tracking boards, and tons of components. Since then, the game has been through many iterations and now the experience of building your own dinosaur park has been distilled and streamlined down to a single piece of paper. Special shout out to David and Cameron Orcutt for their development and playtest help!

When I heard about the GenCant Roll and Write contest, I was hesitant at first, as I had not played many of the example games and wasn’t sure I could offer anything to the genre. But after seeing the amazing community growing around this contest, people openly showcasing their early designs for feedback, blogs about their design experience and all the encouragement and excitement on twitter, I knew I had to get involved. It’s so awesome to see so many people contributing to a new, and growing area of our hobby, and giving GenCant’ers and gamers everywhere nearly limitless opportunities for Roll and Write goodness.

I hope you all enjoy building your very own dinosaur parks as part of your GenCant experience, and I can’t wait to hear everyone’s thoughts. Hit me up @StellarisGames and HAPPY GENCANT 2017!

We’ll post the finished Welcome to Dino World for everyone to enjoy during #GenCant2017!

But, in more great news – most of the game designers have agreed to share their games with GenCanters. We’ll create a post that links to the games in a separate post. But needless to say, there will be a plethora of Roll and Write games for gamers to print at home and enjoy!

Congrats again to James. And huge thanks to the judges (Mandi, Nicole, Ed, and Mason) for all their hard work in evaluating the entries.