Reconstruct ancient Greek pottery, decode an alien language and watch your money burn in real time: Cardboard Edison nominees revealed as unpublished games award celebrates 10th year
The long-running Cardboard Edison Award is celebrating a decade of highlighting the best currently unpublished board games, as it unveils the finalists for this year’s competition.
Cardboard Edison received a record 348 entries this year – up from 339 in 2024 – which it has whittled down to just over 20 finalists ahead of judging by a panel of more than 80 board game industry professionals.
The always eclectic mix of designs includes Athenia, a real time game about reconstructing ancient Greek pottery, Invasion, a two-player battle between a ‘human’ player trying to decode an alien language and an ‘alien’ attempting to abduct the human’s cards, and Dot Com, an app-assisted economic strategy game where your money is burned away in real time.
Other entries this year include Slopeside, which sees players building a 3D ski resort, Slam Quest, in which your only way of communicating card strength with other players is how hard you slam them on the table, and Time to Line, a tableau and deck-building game in which players try to attract quirky guests to queue up for the latest attraction at an amusement park.
Each game’s submission video, featuring an overview by the designers, is available to watch on the Cardboard Edison Award website.
This year’s 85-strong judging panel includes The Op’s director of hobby Pat Marino, veteran designer and Tabletop Game Designers Association co-founder Geoff Engelstein, Wyrmspan and Apiary creator Connie Vogelmann and board game critic Dan Thurot, who pens reviews and deep thoughts on board gaming over at Space-Biff!
The Cardboard Edison Award suffered a public backlash last year after the winning game was unveiled as Crowded Frontier, which was themed around the rush to colonise the American West.
The game’s designer Myles Wallace issued an apology several days after winning the award last May, saying he was “in no way” seeking to glorify America’s westward expansion at the expense of indigenous people, who despite the theming are not represented at all in the design.
He told BoardGameWire in January this year that he had made theme change a requirement as part of his contract negotiations for signing the game, which he said was at the pre-contract stage with a couple of publishers.
Cardboard Edison co-founders Suzanne and Chris Zinsli said it “became clear there was a blind spot in our judging process” after the response to Crowded Frontier’s win, and three months ago revealed a string of changes it hoped would “catch potentially harmful aspects of games’ themes and notify designers about it—without discouraging them from responsibly tackling a tough theme, if that’s their goal”.
They included asking its existing judges to suggest additional people to broaden the judging pool, with the aim of bringing in a wider range of perspectives – as well as updating the guidance given to judges so they know to be mindful of potential theming issues when reviewing games for the award.
Cardboard Edison added at the time that it had become clear in the wake of last year’s award announcement that there was “a desire out there for more transparency about how the contest is run”, which it hoped will be addressed by its Inside the Cardboard Edison Award article.
Speaking to BoardGameWire after this year’s nominees were unveiled, the pair said, “For this year’s contest, we added a new question to the judging form: ‘Do the game’s theme or mechanics raise any concerns for you?’
” The idea was to encourage judges to consider whether there might be any serious problems with a submission that fall outside our usual judging criteria. For example, an offensive theme or stolen mechanics.
“In conjunction with that change, we reviewed all of the judges’ feedback in that field for the highest-ranking games before we settled on the list of finalists.
“Ultimately, we and the judges didn’t see any serious concerns about the games at the top of the list. That could be a sign that just having that question on the judging form influenced how judges thought about and scored the finalists.
“We also read all the comments in that field for all of the submissions (from 1,775 judging forms) before we passed along the judges’ feedback to the designers.
“We found that many judges used that field as intended, and they flagged any concerns or potential concerns they saw.
“But we also saw some judges using the field for other kinds of feedback, so next year we’re going to revisit the guidance we give judges to make sure we’re being more clear about that field’s purpose.”
Previous Cardboard Edison winners have included Octopus Scramble, which was signed up by Sit Down!, Winter, which has been published by Devir, and Umbra Via, which has been published by Pandasaurus Games.
2023 champion Diatoms, in which players take on the role of Victorian naturalists growing microscopic mosaics from algae, went on to raise more than $63,000 from over 1,400 backers in a Kickstarter campaign last September.
Diatoms is now set for a US retail release from 25th Century Games in March this year.
Cardboard Edison was launched in 2012 as a board game design studio and hub, which has expanded from a well-read industry blog into a vast repository of information for board game designers.
The Cardboard Edison Award was launched by Suzanne Zinsli in 2016, with the help of fellow Cardboard Edison founder Chris Zinsli.
Cardboard Edison Award Nominees 2025
Athenia by Mark Holmes
2-5 players
10 minutes
A simultaneous, real time, plate reconstruction game.
Pitch video: https://youtu.be/ySstgPrjDTY
Babble by Jonah Kagan
2-4 players
30-45 minutes
A strategic word-building game. Builders cursed to speak different dialects build a tower to the heavens. Collaborate to build a tower of words, and compete to have your dialect score the most points.
Pitch video: https://youtu.be/vurMI5L2Ln4
Bearden by Keith Donaldson
1-5 players
60-90 minutes
A tactical dice-placement game where you compose artwork by drafting and positioning colorful Paint Dice on your canvas.
Pitch video: https://youtu.be/tM98zHaPolQ
Branching Out by Jeff Grisenthwaite and Eliot Michaels
1-6 players
30 minutes
Players cooperate to grow and shape a beautiful 3D Bonsai tree together.
Pitch video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsyrhPufYlw
Chainbreakers by Kyle Cushman
2-5 players
60 minutes
A card drafting and contract fulfillment game about bike mechanics developing their skills and getting people back on two wheels, with an action selection system revolving around a rotating bicycle wheel.
Pitch video: https://youtu.be/N912CXhzFMc
Dot Com by Sammy Salkind
2 players
10-20 minutes
An app-assisted economic strategy game where your money is burned away in real time.
Pitch video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOtII1YTWr8
Free Range by Pedro Ometto
2-4 players
10-25 minutes
Players are farmers strategizing and pushing their luck to organize their chickens in the best possible way.
Pitch video: https://youtu.be/sEXNe6nvkn4
Ice Hotel by Bob West
2-4 players
45 minutes
The Ice Hotel is melting! Rescue guests’ luggage before your tips wash away!
Pitch video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1f8TO3mMuebwl38YhPxmcSqPT2bz0NZYY/view
Indie Alley by Mallory Hinks
1-4 players
20-30 minutes
A competitive card placement game where you play as a small-town indie band manager promoting bands by strategically placing posters in an alley.
Pitch video: https://youtu.be/kTqs2z3SeSY
Invasion by Amelie Le-Roche and Ashwin Kamath
2 players
20-30 minutes
A deduction/spatial puzzle game that pits Human versus Alien in a race for survival. The Human is trying to deduce what the alien symbols mean, while the Alien is trying to abduct Human cards.
Pitch video: https://youtu.be/AKWFMmqj41o
Kingdom on the Rise by Piotrek Chojnowski
1-4 players
60 minutes
A competitive game where all contribute to building a shared kingdom that expands and rises up as all tiles stack up on three levels.
Pitch video: https://youtu.be/uZnnS8xIRXA
Molcajete by Hugo Labravo
3-5 players
30-45 minutes
Players mix chilis in your molcajete (a traditional stone mortar) to make the best salsa. Other cooks may help you complete your recipe, but others might try to ruin it.
Pitch video: https://youtu.be/bUnxVjFS_2s
Pip It by Jay Bell
2 players
15-20 minutes
A light-strategy dice-tossing game where the pip value facing you determines the strength of your actions.
Pitch video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/18XVRhW0rSJ3n4huKZClnNqbSxCCLga9h/view?usp=drive_link
Produce Bazaar by Adam Eschborn
2-4 players
30-45 minutes
Set in a bustling farmers market, players strategically move two helper tokens around a circle of location cards to gain, trade, and get rid of produce.
Pitch video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcKlHcqTZ0w
Renaissance Fair by Leo Taylor
2-4 players
60 minutes
Craft your perfect modern-day Renaissance Fair, hire cosplay actors, attract the most guests, and host the most festive events in this midweight park-building game.
Pitch video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_oiytftJiE
Slam Quest by Jay Bucciarelli and Phil Gross
2-6 players
20 minutes
In this cooperative game, you cannot speak, so the only method of communicating your cards’ power to your fellow adventurers is how forcefully you SLAM it!
Pitch video: https://youtu.be/7EWEROIzJ1E
Slopeside by Scott R Smith
2-4 players
40 minutes
Build your own fully functioning 3D ski resort from the ground up in this medium-weight game.
Pitch video: https://youtu.be/4dtxXVxVhPM
Theology by Manoj Gedela and Sabareesh Mamidipaka
2-4 players
60-90 minutes
A worker placement and area control game where each player takes on the role of an Ancient Indian God that is trying to become the most worshipped.
Pitch video: https://youtu.be/3nSdanZ0kK8
Time to Line by Adam Zwain
2-4 players
30 to 45 minutes
A tableau- and deck-building game in which players must attract quirky guests—each with their own interests and abilities—to queue up for the latest attraction at an amusement park.
Pitch video: https://youtu.be/UrUV6uS2pvs
Triptych by Brooks Barber
3-4 players
45 minutes
Players’ goal is to complete a three-panel image with a shared slide puzzle that players manipulate through trick taking.
Pitch video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpjMht-lADk
Wildcrafters by Katie Tam
1-6 players
10 minutes per player
You’re a budding apothecary competing to craft potions by foraging and filling your bottles with herbs, flowers, and berries to gain the most reputation before the Harvest ends.
Pitch video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5ikfBNRp8U
