Cardboard Edison has revealed the finalists for its 2025 Cardboard Edison Award, celebrating unpublished board game designs. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the competition, which continues to attract a growing number of participants from around the world.
The 2025 contest received 348 submissions, setting a new record and surpassing the previous year’s 339 entries. Designers from 27 countries contributed to this year’s pool, reflecting the global reach of the board game design community. From these submissions, 21 finalists were selected, representing a wide range of themes, mechanics, and creative approaches.
The finalists include:
- Athenia by Mark Holmes: A real-time plate reconstruction game for 2-5 players.
- Babble by Jonah Kagan: A strategic word-building game where players collaborate and compete to construct a tower of words.
- Bearden by Keith Donaldson: A tactical dice-placement game focused on creating artwork.
- Branching Out by Jeff Grisenthwaite and Eliot Michaels: A cooperative game about growing a 3D bonsai tree.
- Chainbreakers by Kyle Cushman: A card-drafting and contract-fulfillment game centered on bike mechanics.
- Dot Com by Sammy Salkind: An app-assisted economic strategy game with a real-time element.
- Free Range by Pedro Ometto: A farming game about organizing chickens.
- Ice Hotel by Bob West: A game where players rescue luggage from a melting ice hotel.
- Indie Alley by Mallory Hinks: A competitive card placement game about promoting indie bands.
- Invasion by Amelie Le-Roche and Ashwin Kamath: A deduction and spatial puzzle game featuring Humans and Aliens.
- Kingdom on the Rise by Piotrek Chojnowski: A competitive kingdom-building game with a stacking mechanic.
- Molcajete by Hugo Labravo: A game about making salsa with elements of cooperation and sabotage.
- Pip It by Jay Bell: A light-strategy dice-tossing game.
- Produce Bazaar by Adam Eschborn: A strategic game set in a farmers market.
- Renaissance Fair by Leo Taylor: A park-building game about creating a modern-day Renaissance fair.
- Slam Quest by Jay Bucciarelli and Phil Gross: A cooperative game where players communicate by slamming cards.
- Slopeside by Scott R Smith: A game about building a 3D ski resort.
- Theology by Manoj Gedela and Sabareesh Mamidipaka: A worker placement and area control game featuring Ancient Indian Gods.
- Time to Line by Adam Zwain: A tableau- and deck-building game about attracting guests to an amusement park.
- Triptych by Brooks Barber: A trick-taking game with a shared slide puzzle.
- Wildcrafters by Katie Tam: A competitive potion-crafting game.
Pitch videos for each finalist’s game are available on the Cardboard Edison website.
In the next phase of the competition, the finalists’ games will be evaluated by a panel of board game industry professionals. Judges will assess the games based on criteria such as engagement, originality of theme and mechanics, replayability, smoothness of play, and fit for the target audience.
The winner of the 2025 Cardboard Edison Award will be announced later this year. Past winners have gone on to achieve recognition and success in the board game industry.
Source: Tabletop Gaming News
