I'm running an Art Portal contest in celebration of my upcoming boardgame, Curse of the Wymer Stones, and if you're interested you should make something for it!

Check out this Art for Characters and Backstory

Download the Rulebook for Curse of the Wymer Stones (from dumping grounds here on Newgrounds)

Curse of the Wymer Stones on Gamecrafter

When to When: 08/19 - 09/25 [UPDATE: CONTEST ENDS OCTOBER 1 NOW!]

Judging will be done shortly following, and the winners will be announced soonish after.

Guidelines:

All submissions to qualify must:

Be uploaded to the Art Portal

Have the tag #CoTWS

Must be rated E

Prizes

1st Prize: $100 + a Physical Copy of Curse of the Wymer Stones

2nd Prize: $50 + a Physical Copy of Curse of the Wymer Stones

3rd Prize: a Physical Copy of Curse of the Wymer Stones

My wife and I will judge the entries, and announce the winners.

Below is some more information about the boardgame, if anybody is interested.

Backstory on Making the game

My wife and I started working on Curse of the Wymer Stones back in 2017. The game changed tremendously, every time we played it we found something to change or tweak. Little by little, it evolved into the finished product that we have today.

When we started, we knew we wanted a game that was simple to play, easy to follow and not too terrible to set-up. We finally got there, but it was a hard road to find playtesters during the lockdown, so we just played it ourselves, over and over, and over. Eventually, we got other humans to play it, and they gave us valuable feedback as well (Shout out to Playerlair).

What's the game like?

The final game is what I would call a "Classic Board Game" in that you have a character that moves on the board and interacts with pieces on the board. The part that is different is all the traps and monsters are played by a single player (the villain) and the other players (the heroes) try to beat the villain. Also, if one of the heroes dies, their game isn't over yet. They become a wraith, and the outcome of their die roll will either help the other players or hurt them. Eventually, the villain gains control of their playable characters, the Cursed Dwarves. Then, it's a head on fight between the living heroes and the Cursed Dwarves to see if the heroes win the game or the villain is victorious.

It isn't re-inventing the wheel. There aren't weird mechanics that are difficult to remember. It's pretty much smash your way to victory or die trying. There are a lot of strategic opportunities, depending on how you play, but there's only one way for the heroes to win: Defeat the Cursed Dwarves. The villain wins if all of the heroes become wraiths.

It can be played by up to 5 people (1 villain vs 4 heroes)

How are we making the boardgame?

We made a bunch of just paper and pen prototypes to start with. We used a few different print-on-demand companies once we narrowed down the art, then eventually we found Gamecrafter and decided to use them to make it. They're super nice, have been ultra helpful, and they don't require us to buy a ton of these up front. Sure, they're a little more expensive, but we'd rather support them than get a little cheaper game that is built by what is essentially slave labor. Not cool. Not to mention that storing a bunch of these things would be super-duper expensive.

We wanted to make the game cheaper, but there just wasn't a way that we could afford.

There is, however, freeish ways to play it if you have a PC.

There's a Tabletopia version and a Tabletop Simulator version (thanks again Playerlair)