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• The nominees for the Graf Ludo 2011 – an award focused on game graphics and artistic design – have been announced, with archetypal Eurogame artist Michael Menzel picking up three of the six nominations in the family game category (and an additional nomination in the half-dozen children's game).
• Gryphon Games is soliciting opinions on the cover design of its upcoming version of Can't Stop.
• Repos Production has released Time's Up! as an iPhone app.
• Z-Man Games newsletter #29 (PDF) is now out, with details on Palenque, Mondo and the Discworld game Guards! Guards!
• Alderac Entertainment Group is publishing a fundraising card playable in Legend of the Five Rings – "Stone of Rememberance" – with all proceeds collected from this card's sales going to the American Red Cross for Japanese recovery efforts in the aftermath of the earthquake/tsunami in mid-April 2011.
• Spanish publisher Gen-X Games, which has previously had a few of its titles distributed in North America through FRED Distribution, has signed a distribution deal with Alliance Game Distributors, according to a news post on The Gaming Gang.
• Jeux'n'CO interviews designer Michel Pinon, designer of the fantastic abstract strategy game Versus (which unknown to me was released as an iPad app in Sept. 2010 – as I mentioned in another post, these games are popping up everywhere). In addition to hinting at a new large game being released in the near future from Asyncron Games, Pinon says that a new French/English edition of Le Mot le plus Court ("The Shortest Word") is in the works.
• Designer David Whitcher has passed along further details about the Protospiel Card Game Design contest, which I first covered in February 2011. The ten semi-finalists have been pared to four finalists. They are:
-----* Card Farm: Create the best farm by planting and harvesting crops to sell at market over the four seasons.
-----* Mission Control: Explore and settle the galaxy.
-----* Mow Money: Outbid your opponents to earn the reputation of the best landscaper in town.
-----* Vaudeville: Book acts to make the most money for your theater.
Says Whitcher, "The final judging will be done by the designers and guests attending this year's Protospiel held in Ann Arbor, MI, July 8, 9 and 10. For more information on attending, see Protospiel.org. The winning game will be produced in a limited run and distributed worldwide."
• Want to visit Spiel in Essen, Germany but aren't sure how to arrange the trip without ending up pantsless and destitute in a back alley brauhaus with dice wedged in your nether regions? Assuming you don't enjoy being in that situation (not that there's anything wrong with it), you might consider checking out the Spiel 2011 trip organized by Geek Nation Tours.
Despite BGG admin and all-around pain-in-the-neck Dale Yu being one of the tour guides and giving a talk about how to get the most out of your trip, the tour sounds like a winner, with time in the Netherlands sandwiching the four days in Essen. I spent six months in Utrecht way back in 1996 and still think fondly of those days. Not the ones in January when it was too cold to travel more than 100 meters without crippling pain in my joints – not those days, mind you – but all of the other ones, with Prodigy's "Firestarter" plastered all over MTV Europe, Jerry Springer subtitled in Dutch running on the television, and me surviving on an enormous intake of ontbijtkoek while getting hustled by expert Magic players on the canal banks at The Joker. Good times...
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