Jay Vowles 🔜 Protospiel Philly

Come join Game Makers Guild Philadelphia for playtesting this Sunday 2/15 5-10pm at The Philly Game Shop 🎲✂️
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5 Calls Spend 5 minutes. Make 5 calls. Make your voice heard.

Finished my daily calls (voice mails this morning) begging my reps to not fund the group that could haul me off the street with impunity for "looking Asian".

Now to my regular begging people on social media to please make the calls too. It takes 5 mins. Get over your anxiety - people are dying.

Come join Game Makers Guild Philadelphia for the first playtesting event of 2026 this Sunday 1/25 5-10pm at The Philly Game Shop 🎲✂️
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UNPUB Festival hotel room block closing soon. Discounted rate for attendees, book by February 11th to stay onsite at the convention.

Want to make the most of Unpub Festival? Worried about late-night FOMO? Stay onsite to maximize the fun!

Book by Feb 11th for attendees-only discount: 

https://www.marriott.com/event-reservations/reservation-link.mi?id=1747848194805&key=GRP&guestreslink2=true&app=resvlink&inventoryMissing=true

🎲✂️

Gingerbread version of the hot streak box, topped with fondant versions of the racers, Mom replaced with santa

Top down view of the box included Hot Streak written in icing on candy ribbon

Close up of the fondant racers

It's the final stretch till Christmas. Here's my gingerboard creation for 2025. May those risky gift requests pay off.
@cmyk.games

Come join Game Makers Guild Philadelphia for the last playtesting event of 2025 this Sunday 12/28 5-10pm at The Philly Game Shop 🎲✂️
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0:22. Fewer buttons

Mentioned?! It’s the first one! Guaranteed to be seen by even the people who scroll through the least. Congrats!

Finally I got to show Elemystic by Jamie Sabriel to a few new people. I love this perfect little battle of wits in 9 cards.

Late Saturday night Hot Streak by @perryjon.bsky.social was a huge hit as usual. Every race was exciting even though all 3 had the exact same outcome.

Other new-to-me games:
Gugong by @modgames.bsky.social was great, and Tornado Splash by Moyuki Adisawa was wild and challenging.
Living Forest by @severinhorror.bsky.social and Heat by Asger Harding Granerud & Daniel Skjold Pedersen I had only ever played on BGA and were fun to try in person.

Babylon board game with tiles on multiple layers covered in little plastic fountains, stairs, bridges, and statues.

Also got to try Babylon by Olivier Grégiore, which I had seen at First Look last year but didn’t get a chance to play. And this was the only time all weekend I actually took a picture of a game!

As for published games, in the First Look area I got to try L’Oaf by @bartgamedesign.bsky.social, a great easy-playing game with an excellent name about lazy bakers. Fun tragedy-of-the-commons demonstration.

Work on my designs continued with some playtesting, a couple of publisher meetings, and a very productive brainstorming session with my co-designer @jongilmour.bsky.social

I’m thankful for an excellent #PAXUnplugged this year:

Game Makers Guild Philadelphia had a table in the @unpub.org room and we had local designers testing their prototypes there all weekend. I got to play a couple of cool games from @jakekbarnhart.bsky.social and @jamesfirnhaber.bsky.social

I remember this one. It’s fun! Great distillation of games like Diplomacy and Game of Thrones.

Board game map of circles containing numbers with straight and curved lines of different colors connecting them in intersecting patterns.

Probably not. It’s a roll&write where you use templates to draw paths on a shared galaxy map and it looks like this:

Come to Unpub and look for the red tablecloth!

Mostly I’ll be testing Smash Dash, but I’ll also have Dying Suns and Rule the Stars with me, so I’ll try to get them to the table too.

I’m excited to check this out! Each of your games I’ve seen have something really interesting going on.

Board game box filled with prototype game components, next to a card box with “Dying Suns” written on it.

I’ll also have my sci-fi sandbox deckbuilder, my roll&write that uses templates to draw paths on a star map, and my light dexterity party game. They (almost) all fit in this box!)

Photo of Smash Dash board game showing the blue team (a goblin holding a bomb riding on the back of a troll holding a club) reaching the finish line just a few steps ahead of the green and red teams.

My focus this year is Smash Dash, a real-time combat racing game for teams of two (and a crooked referee). It’s chaotic and goofy but with lots of opportunities for collaboration and clever play.

Finished prepping my prototypes for #PAXUnplugged! I’ll mostly by playtesting in the Unpub room, but I also have a couple of pitches lined up and hopefully I can get a few more.

Game Designers! We will be hosting our monthly in person playtest w/ @breakmygame.com at Redcaps Corner tonight at 6:30pm. Designers! Sign up with the link below!

www.eventbrite.com/e/break-my-g...

Testers! Come support your local design community! 🎲✂️

Rule the Stars - Roll&write about expanding across the galaxy by tracing paths on a star map.
Dying Suns - Adventure sandbox deckbuilder about starship captains in a dying galaxy.
Color flip - Simple dexterity party game where you flip big colored discs trying to get 3 of your color touching first.

Yes, but I think you might need to open DMs or follow me first to enable that.
In the meantime, here’s a super quick overview of my games:
Smash Dash - Real-time combat racing for teams of 2 (and a crooked referee). (Thanks for the kind words @gregisonthego.bsky.social!)

I have some games to show you!

Come join Game Makers Guild Philadelphia for playtesting this Sunday 11/16 5-10pm at The Philly Game Shop 🎲✂️

Note that this is a week earlier due to PAX Unplugged - hope to see you there too!

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Metatopia was excellent as usual. I had 3 very productive playtests of Smash Dash and got to play an interesting variety of games, the best of which was Look Into My Eyes from @nickmajorbowden.bsky.social. Elegant 2-player battle of wits with multiple juicy decisions every turn. Incredible game.

"Game designers will routinely fail at making something fun. When the game of making games is played right, it is always right outside the edge of what the designers know how to do."

Incredible quote from an amazing article. Something I'm only beginning to understand 10+ years in to designing.