Now Accepting Submissions… Again
About a year ago we opened Pine Island Games up for game submissions.
The response was incredible.
We reviewed 150 submissions, many of which were impressive with clever gameplay, and interesting mechanisms. There is a lot of talent in this community, and a lot of great games that deserve a home.
We ultimately elected to work with Andreas Voellmer to bring his game Sigil to market. It’s a 2-player abstract strategy dueling game, that is a little out of the initial wheelhouse of what I was looking to acquire.
Recent Sigil prototype
But, it really spoke to me from a design perspective, has extremely tight gameplay, and I had a clear vision of what we could do with the game, and how to bring it to market.
With the Nut Hunt Kickstarter in the rear-view mirror, we now have the bandwidth to take on another project.
We are once again accepting submissions.
Who we are and our commitment to you
I was blown away by the volume and quality of our last round of submissions, especially since we are - and were even more so then - an unproven company. We have one game (Nut Hunt) coming off a successful Kickstarter. Sigil in the works and are growing into ourselves, and trying to build a sustainable catalogue.
I believe that we earned the trust of the community because of our open and frank dialogue around our vision.
Pine Island Games is a young company, founded in 2021. The intent has always been for it to be a games publishing company, rather than solely a vehicle to bring my own designs to market. That means that at our core we are looking to build partnerships with the design community.
But, more on that in a minute.
As a company we are looking to grow into a release schedule of 1-2 games a year. Ultimately, we hope to grow off of Kickstarter, and not be reliant on serialized crowdfunding.
Both goals will take some time. And, will take your confidence in us, to trust us to develop and bring your game into the world.
In terms of the kind of investment we would make into any game that we license the rights to, I’ll let our existing projects (Nut Hunt & Sigil) speak for themselves.
We believe in partnering with the best we can find to help bring our games to life.
What we are looking for in a partner
We are a small company, with only a limited bandwidth for new games. That means that we put a lot of value not just in licensing excellent designs, but also in the people who we partner with.
We are looking to partner with people who share our values. That is who are passionate about game design, who display professionalism, who are honest, can take constructive criticism, and put creating a great product ahead of their ego. We are looking for partners who value openness, community engagement, and display a high level of ethos. At a minimum, that means buying into our mission statement.
We strive to create memorable, fun, and beautiful games. We aim to create value for our customers, fans, and the broader board gaming and game design communities. We value personally connecting with, and being helpful to our peers and supporters. We believe that games are meant to bring people together, and that the board gaming hobby and industry will be healthier and more fun through increased equity and inclusivity.
What we are looking for in a game
The last round of submissions opened my eyes to the kinds of games we are looking to acquire. As we continue to define our catalogue we have some room to decide what those guardrails will be.
This is the initial Sigil prototype that I played
We of course do have preferences – which brings us to our tenets of game design which we expect submissions to mostly satisfy:
[please note that these are our tenets & preferences, they are not universal truths of game design]
Strategic depth & mechanical elegance. Player cognitive load should be spent on strategic decisions, not on understanding complex (sometimes fiddly) mechanics. While mechanical complexity can be appropriate – it must be applied to drive an exciting strategic payoff. In general we prefer to simplify games wherever possible.
Organic start, organic progression, organic end. A progressive game play where pacing is driven by the players rather than strict mechanical progression and rounds.
Reward over punishment. Reward players for good play, rather than punish them for mistakes.
Resonant thematic drive. Strong and memorable thematic elements are relevant mechanically. We don’t believe in stapling on themes, but strive to weave theme through game play.
Ability to plan ahead. Decisions matter from turn to turn and players should have the ability to plan ahead. Of course, the best laid plans of squirrels and gamers…
Balancing luck and skill. Our favorite games balance skill and luck. While tight strategic game play improves a player’s chance of winning, elements of luck add drama, excitement, and an opportunity for players of all levels to enjoy a game together. We prefer randomness of inputs, rather than as a mechanic for resolution.
Replay-ability. Replay-ability through both interesting, dynamic, game play, and through variable mechanics. No two games are alike.
Tactile and visual. Board games are tactile and visual experiences. We value strong physical and visual design to engage players, draw them into the game, and improve ease of play.
Screw the man, not the players. While we value player interaction and conflict in our designs, we also try to minimize feel bad and “gotcha” moments. We avoid mechanics that screw over individual players, create ganging up, or king-making dynamics.
Bringing people together. Games are a conduit for bringing people together, both through exciting game play and community.
Main course or dessert. Pine Island’s initial focus is on medium weight games in the 30-60 minute range. These games can bring people together as events (a night of Nut Hunt), or be a side dish for a social gathering (a game after dinner). In the future we expect to expand our menu of games to include more “main dishes”, or event games in the 60-120 minute range.
Sigil and Nut Hunt each meet all of these tenets (Sigil is only ~20 minutes, but people tend to play multiple games in a row).
Preferences
In addition to our tenets we have a number of preferences for the kinds of games we are looking to license, that aren’t mandatory but are preferred. Of course, if we see an amazing game that breaks these, then we’ll give it a hard look.
At Least 2-4 Players: Ideally any game we license will play at least 2-4 players. Our goal would be to expand the game to a single player mode, and potentially to higher player count if it made sense.
Non-Cooperative: There are plenty of great co-op games out there, but for now, we aren’t very interested in publishing either cooperative, or semi-cooperative games.
Theme preferences: We don’t have strong thematic preferences. We like cute animals, magic, farms, and pirates. We would steer away from certain themes, especially dark or edgy themes: Grimdark, Zombies, Horror, etc.
Mechanism preferences: We aren’t interested in social deduction mechanisms, bluffing, and kingmaking. We also aren’t interested in roll & writes.
No Party Games: We aren’t interested in party games. Fun, thoughtful higher player count games could be a good fit for us, but we aren’t interested in the Werewolfs or Cards Against Humanities.
Deal breakers
I think most of these speak for themselves. These are our deal breakers:
Adult or explicit content
Single player only
Alternate rulesets for an existing game (or a 52 card deck of playing cards)
A non-board game (TCG, toy, RPG, etc.)
Offensive or insensitive cultural or social content
Professionalism matters
We’re a small company.
It is important to us to partner with the right people. People who bring a level of professionalism, and passion to the table.
This is partly because we want healthy and productive working relationships with our partners. But, it’s bigger than that.
Partnering with the wrong person is an existential risk to our budding business.
This means that in addition to vetting game design submissions, we also need to understand who you are. At first that just means that you make working with you easy, provide what we need to evaluate your game, and don’t actively interact with us in a negative way.
But, eventually, if we move forward with interest in your game, we’ll want to get to know you a little better. To make sure that you don’t post terrible things on social media, and that you are a reasonable human being.
Some final thoughts
A lot of this article and post is about us, what we need, what our expectations are, etc.
That tone is by necessity. Evaluating games based on just a rulebook and a sell sheet is hard. It’s hard to see the passion that was poured into your project and have to turn it down because it doesn’t fit what we are looking for, or because there is some amorphous element that we can’t quite identify that makes us pass.
There are a lot of great games out there, and we have limited capacity and resources. We definitionally need to be selective. And we don’t want to waste your time submitting games that aren’t a good fit. Or have your great design buried under a pile of submissions from designers who aren’t approaching the process with a level of professionalism and thoughtfulness.
But, our ultimate goal is the same as yours.
We want to see your innovative, fun, exciting game. We want to work with you to license it. We want to hire the best illustrators and graphic designers we can find. We want to print professional copies and send them off to your favorite reviewers.
We want strangers to come up to you at a convention just to shake your hand and tell you that you designed their favorite game. We want to publish something that we are proud of.
And, we want to take that journey with you.
If you have a game that you think might be a good fit for us, please send it our way: Submissions Form.
