Community Voting has now started in The Game Crafter’s Big Box Challenge contest. There’s 56 total entries that need to be looked over, voted on, and finally trimmed down to 20 semi-finalists.

The Big Box Challenge was a fairly open contest this time around, with the rules as follows:

We want you to design a completely unique big box game. We’re not limiting theme or mechanics with this challenge. It is as free form as it gets. There are only a few requirements: It must use a large retail box, it must play between 1 and 2 hours, and it must have a cost of at least $30 and not more than $60.

Voting will last for the next five days.

I haven’t gotten through all the entries yet, but there’s certainly some great looking games in the bunch.

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Cosponsored by Toys “R” Us and Scholastic Parent & Child magazine, University Games’ 22nd annual National Young Game Inventors Contest offers the grand prize winner a $10,000 savings bond, a $250 gift certificate to Toys “R” Us, and a family trip to San Francisco. The contest is open to board games designed by children age 5-12. University Games may publish the winner but no further royalties will be paid.

The deadline for submitting game prototypes is October 15th.

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Marbles is running a game design competition they’re calling, “Who’s Got Game?“. The company is looking for “unique” “pattern games” for 1-2 adult players.

While the deadline is short—this Friday, August 1st—only photos and a description are required (prototypes are optional). The grand prize is also pretty nice—$2,000, an appearance on the National Geographic Channel’s Brain Games, production and distribution by Marbles, and a 5 percent royalty on retail sales.

Other than the winning entry, entrants retain rights to their submissions.

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A joint program of the British Toy and Hobby Association and the Trading Standards Institute, Playsafe is a youth toy and game design competition focused on safety. While products submitted may be educational and should certainly be fun and unique, safety features, including warnings, usage instructions, conformity symbols, and component specifications, will be a major factor in the selection of winners.

The deadline for entry is 15 June 2014. Cash prizes will be awarded to the winners in various categories, as well as to the winners’ schools.

[via Toy World]

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