Iranian designer’s Persian folklore game about exorcising demons wins 2026 Cardboard Edison Award, which celebrates the best in unpublished designs

Astrolabe, a Persian folklore-inspired game which tasks players with hunting and binding demons using the titular instrument, has won this year’s Cardboard Edison Award celebrating unpublished board game designs.

The debut design from Iranian video game veteran Yasaman Farazan was praised by judges for its “genius” action selection system, which makes use of a physical ‘astrolabe’, calling it “thematic, toyetic, and an absolute joy to engage with”.

Farazan’s design took first place out of a record 396 entries this year – a total which has almost quadrupled since Cardboard Edison unveiled its debut award winners a decade ago.

Part of that growth has been down to the competition’s pedigree of winners that have gone on to be published by well-known studios.

They include Winter, published by Devir, Castell from Renegade Game Studios and Umbra Via from Pandasaurus Games, as well as 2023 champion Diatoms, which followed a successful Kickstarter campaign with retail publication by 25th Century Games in partnership with Ludoliminal.

Second place in this year’s competition was Limelight, a push-your-luck deckbuilder by Cameron Fleming about staging a Broadway show, while third place went to Luke Wolyncewicz’s Braggin’ Wranglers, which sees players attempting to catch wooden animal meeples using an adjustable lasso.

Hatchlings, a game by Alan Leduc in which players try to get baby sea turtles to the ocean using “unique and clever” movement queue mechanism, placed fourth.

This year’s 20 finalists also included a magnet-based vertical castle-building game and a medium-weight strategy title centred around wedding planning.

More than 80 judges took part in this year’s award process, including The Search for Planet X and Fromage designer Ben Rosset, Elysium and Next Station: London creator Matthew Dunstan and High Tide designer and Diana Jones Emerging Designer award winner Marceline Leiman.

Last year’s Cardboard Edison was won by Dot Com, an economic strategy game which uses an app to run players’ money supplies down in real time.

The game, designed by former Ravensburger game development intern Sammy Salkind, puts players in the shoes of startup founders battling to build their internet startups during the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s.

Cardboard Edison was launched in 2012 as a board game design studio and hub, which has since expanded from a well-read industry blog into a vast repository of information for board game designers.

Suzanne Zinsli created the Cardboard Edison Award a decade ago with the help of fellow Cardboard Edison founder Chris Zinsli.

All of the finalists from this year, and the pitch videos of their designs, can be viewed below this article.

Cardboard Edison finalists 2026:

Winner: Astrolabe by Yasaman Farazan
2-5 players
45-90 minutes
Players are exorcists in a Persian folklore world, using astrolabes to read the stars, hunt
demons, and bind them into artifacts. Each round, players secretly rotate their astrolabe to
choose an action, a number, and a time of day, then reveal and resolve actions in ascending
order.
Pitch video

2nd Place: Limelight by Cameron Fleming
3-6 players
45 minutes
Limelight is a push-your-luck deckbuilder about staging a Broadway show. Over three Acts,
you’ll audition talent, hire crew, and rehearse your show, trying to achieve the perfect mix of
cards on Opening Night.
Pitch video

3rd Place: Braggin’ Wranglers by Luke Wolyncewicz
2-8 players
15 minutes
Braggin’ Wranglers sees players catching animals to score points using a unique adjustable
lasso—but there’s a twist! Turn order is decided by your lasso size, which you secretly set at the
start of each round!
Pitch video

4th Place: Hatchlings by Alan Leduc
2-5 players
30 minutes
You’re a Nature Spirit with one job. Get your baby sea turtles out of their comfortable nest,
across the beach, and into the water where they belong, thus earning praise from Mother
Nature. It would be easy if it weren’t for the relentless bully Steven Seagull and the other Spirits
competing for glory.
Pitch video

Other finalists:

Black Ruth of Dogtown by Keith DeViere Donaldson
1-4 players
30 minutes
Black Ruth of Dogtown is a procedural oracle system driven by a circular mancala drafting
mechanism, where players construct a three-by-three grid to optimize set collection and
speculative scoring in service of a final narrative divination resolution.
Pitch video

Catacombes de Paris by Nicholas Henning
2-5 players
70-110 minutes
In Catacombes de Paris, players take on the solemn duty of transporting the remains of millions
through the bustling streets of 18th-century Paris to build their personal ossuary in the famed
Catacombs. This highly thematic experience combines a strategic pick-up-and-deliver system
with an engaging polyomino mini-game for building out your ossuary board.
Pitch video

Deductive Seasoning by Eric Ledger
2-5 players
20-40 minutes
Deductive Seasoning is a family-friendly deduction card game where you are a food scientist
who has concocted a dish using a secret ingredient from the Periodic Table of Flavor. You must
figure out other players’ secret ingredient through careful play and observation.
Pitch video

Goa Kranti by Andy Desa
2-4 players
60-90 minutes
A cooperative game about an overlooked chapter in history: Goa’s struggle for independence
from Portugal (1932-1961). Players embody historical freedom fighters choosing between
violent resistance and peaceful satyagraha. Core mechanisms include push-your-luck resource
gathering, deck improvement, and bag-building for a pivotal mid-game check when India gains
independence.
Pitch video

Hybrid Hijinks by Jena Keesee
3-5 players
60 minutes
A competitive game, creating hybrid creatures and utilizing variable, configurable player powers
to impress visitors and earn the most approval for shifting prowess.
Pitch vide

Ladybugs by Michael Posada
1-4 players
30 minutes
Push your luck by rolling dice that represent a colony of ladybugs flying over a field of flowers.
Your rolls determine which flowers you add to your garden, which scoring conditions you unlock,
and how many points you earn.
Pitch video

Match Patch by Jack Rosen
3-5 players
20 minutes
Match Patch is a game about the benefits of farming using companion planting methods.
Mechanically, it is a card-matching race game where players try to diversify their harvested
crops.
Pitch video

Midnight Spawn by Jayson Farrell
1-4 players
60 minutes
Midnight Spawn is a game about the mysterious and incredible deep sea. In this game you’re a
researcher in your deep-submergence vehicle, or DSV. You’ll discover strange creatures and
observe them eat or move other creatures, manipulating the shared board. You can also
upgrade your DSV with tech cards or boost your score with research cards.
Pitch video

Moonforge by Pawel Owsianka
1-4 players
90 minutes
In Moonforge, players command large space facilities capable of capturing asteroids, extracting
valuable resources (energy, metal and minerals), and upgrading their operations with new
modules and functions. Resources can be sold for currency points, while depleted asteroids
contribute material toward the creation of a new moon.
Pitch video

PiramiDuel by Guillermo Viciano
2 players
20-30 minutes
A game for two players where you will explore Ancient Egypt, fighting to claim the most
influential pyramids.
Pitch video

Possessions by Dan Nichols
2-4 players
60-90 minutes
Possessions is a competitive strategy game where you play as ghosts with one hour to finish
your unfinished business and fulfill your final wishes. As the clock ticks down, strive to get the
most value from your secret ambitions by possessing your family’s last living heirs.
Pitch video

StrongHolds by Nelson de Castro
2 players
40-60 minutes
StrongHolds is a competitive castle-building game featuring magnetic tiles that allow players to
build vertically unlike any other game. Harness your creativity and vision as a Medieval
Architect, while sabotaging your opponent by tossing and sliding siege tiles to topple their
progress.
Pitch video

The Leftovers by Larry Ted McBride
2-4 players
25 minutes
The Leftovers is a cooperative trick-taking game of community deck-building, resource
management, strategy, and story. With your party of magical foodfolk, you will work together to
complete objectives and avoid vicious food fiends as you explore the abandoned halls of the
Enchanted Ladle.
Pitch video

The Roots of All Evil by Dean Burry
2-4 players
15-20 minutes
Be the first animal cultist to summon the tree demon Blackthorn by creating ever-expanding
rings of root cards in which to place your sacred offerings.
Pitch video

The Wedding Planner by Jose Lema
2-4 players
60-90 minutes
You just got engaged! Now you have 12 months to plan the wedding of your dreams. The
Wedding Planner is a medium-weight strategy game that captures the authentic pressure of the
process: an overwhelming workload, finite resources, and the constant tension between vision
and reality.
Pitch video

Wunderkammer by Rosco Schock
2-4 players
45 minutes
Wunderkammer is a set collection style game with a unique simultaneous silent auction
acquisition mechanism. Each curiosity that you collect also has two attributes so the scoring of
your collection is scored in each dimension.
Pitch video