#amsubmitting

Happy Wednesday, Geekly Gang! Kyra Kyle here. Today marks April’s fifth Wednesday, so that means our writers will share personal updates over the past three months or so since our last update. Honestly, I don’t know if we’ll hear from Season and Skye this month, but you’ll get an update from me. Here’s what I’ve been doing these past three months.

Kyra’s Personal Update

If you’ve been following my Game Design Brain Dump series lately, you’ll know all about the Great Plains Game Festival (GPGF) and how I submitted three games for its inaugural Playtest to Win Event. My designs weren’t checked out as much as I would’ve liked, but I got some good feedback. Spill the Beans and Whirligig Pets received mostly praise, so those two games are pretty much ready to submit. And I have begun submitting Spill the Beans. That’s one part of my New Year’s Resolution down. I have a submittable board game, and I’m submitting it to various companies.

Whirligig Pets needs a promo video, but that may occur as soon as today. I have a script and a ring light. Let’s do this thing. I’ll share whenever I begin submitting Whirligig Pets and whatever happens with any responses. Fingers crossed that I’ll hear something back from my first wave of Spill the Beans submissions. While I’m sure these companies receive multiple queries daily (I went with some larger board game publishers first), I was hoping I would have heard something back from someone by now. I may wait a week or two and follow up.

I also submitted No Kings to GPGF’s Playtest to Win Event. That one needs more work. I’ll try various things to see if I can jazz up the gameplay. I’ve mentioned in a past Brain Dump that popular art’s sweet spot between familiar and strange could lie in the following Venn Diagram.

Evidently, No Kings leans toward the “Potentially Boring” side of this Venn Diagram. I have some ideas to shake up the design, and multiple people signed up for No Kings’ notifications. No Kings had more followers than the other two games. Most people who responded sounded as if they would give the game another chance. But before I send the game back into the wild, I’ll send it through the meat grinder a time or two.

Moving from the games I’m designing to games I’m playing, I’ve dove into the Marvel Multiverse RPG or MMRPG or the d616 System. That’s a lot of nicknames for one game. Anyway, I will be running a one-shot MMRPG scenario at the Nuke-Con Aftershock Event next month (May 16, 2026) at the Bellevue (Nebraska) Public Library. If that goes well, you could see me at a Free RPG Day Event at the end of June. Regardless, I’ve busied myself by converting some of the TSR Marvel RPG of the 1980s into the d616 System. Roll Charts! Woo hoo! My future holds countless hours of rolling up characters with ridiculous origins and powers.

And since I’m old enough to have played the 1980’s TSR Marvel RPG, I regret to inform you that I’ve had lower back pain for the past several days. I haven’t been able to leave the bed too often. While that helps me read four resource books for the MMRPG and catch up on some other reading, I haven’t been able to sit for prolonged periods. I’m on the mend. I’ll get back to writing and game design real soon.

I’ve been submitting here and there to literary journals, but for the most part, that’s all I have for these past couple of months. Let’s check in with Skye.

Skye’s Personal Update

Long story short: I got a new job.

This has taken up the majority of my time over the past few months. I wasn’t getting enough hours at my movie theater job, which was having a negative effect on my income and prompted me to seek out new employment. Ultimately, I landed a job at Carvana. In all honesty, I didn’t even expect to get an interview for this position (let alone get hired), but I’m very glad that I did. I like going on adventures with Carvana.

So far, things have been going well; the only difficult part has been sorting out my hours between my new job and my theater job. Yes, I ended up keeping the theater job. The good news is that I’m getting the hours I need; the bad news is that my free time is completely unpredictable now. I’ll still try to post and update whenever I can, and I still love being a part of the Geekly Community.

We geeks gotta stick together, right?

Hey, hey! Kyra Kyle here again. Thank you for reading, and wherever you are, I hope you’re having a great day.

Happy Friday, Geekly Gang! Kyra Kyle here. I’ve been silent on the board game design brain dumps over the past several weeks. It’s been busy. Earlier this month, I attended the Great Plains Gaming Festival (GPGF). We’ll discuss soon, but before we get into that, I’m getting to the fun part: Submitting.

Sell Sheet

Almost every publisher requires a sell sheet, so I guess I’ll kick off this game design dump with sell sheets. Sell sheets remind the publisher what your game is all about. Below is a sell sheet for Spill the Beans (I omitted my contact information).

This sell sheet could use some more work. I always second-guess my pictures and layout. But this sell sheet contains what it needs: the name of the game, contact info, the hook (what makes the game unique), demographics (age, player count, and time), a list of components, a brief overview, and quick rundown (with visuals) of how the game is played during a turn.

The background picture (of jellybeans) is obscured by a white backdrop, making the text and pictures on top of the white backdrop legible. You don’t need a fancy background or a colored backdrop. I did so here to add a little extra color. Frankly, I may have overdone it a little. Legible text and images (of the game) are key. I like having a logo, but you don’t need one. And the tagline does enough to let publishers know what kind of game Spill the Beans is.

Next, we have an overview picture of the game. Always a plus to have in a sell sheet. Publishers need to see all–or at least most of–the game’s components. Demographics are shown to the left of the overview pic. Again, publishers need to know who the game is for, how many players the game accommodates, and how long the game takes to play. I settled on 15-25 minutes because I noticed some players strategize more than others (sending the game to 25 minutes), but I didn’t include plays of first-time gamers. The time on the sell sheet should reflect the average time it takes to play a game, not teaching the game to new players. So, of course, Spill the Beans will take a few extra minutes when someone first learns the rules. It really doesn’t take long to learn this game.

Under the overview and demographics, we find a brief (three to four sentence) description of the game, and beneath that we find what players will do (mostly) on their turns, giving publishers an idea of the game’s flow. Each turn action has a header, a picture, and a very brief explanation of each action underneath the pics. Do not include too many of the rules. That’s for the rulebook.

Finally, we get components, features, and contact info. Typically, the components section doesn’t need a detailed breakdown of each item. For instance, if your game includes 110 standard cards, potential publishers don’t need to know that half the cards are of one type and the other half is a different type. Publishers are only interested total number of cards and size. In Spill the Beans, I mention 18 Tarot-sized cards. I don’t say that eight of them are player reference cards and the other 10 are jar cards. That’s for the rulebook to explain further. Features are what make your game standout, and contact info should include your name, e-mail address, and phone number. You can see why I didn’t share that here. Lol

Sometimes, the things that aren’t included are just as important as the ones you do include. I don’t include a thorough rules explanation. I’ve seen game designers try to squeeze in their entire rulebook on a sell sheet. No! Don’t do that. Consequently, you don’t want walls of text. They’re intimidating. I don’t believe I included any flowery market language or buzz words in this sell sheet, words like unique, fun, exciting, or sustainigizing.

Wait. That last one wasn’t a word. And I didn’t mention how long I’ve been working on this game. First off, publishers don’t need to know that. It may even hurt your pitch if a publisher finds out you’ve been working on a game for years. Second, I share those details on this blog. If a publisher wants to know the story behind some of these games, they could look them up on this website. Eek!

Overview Video

Years ago, overview videos were nice to have. They are now–almost–industry standard. You can still get away with only have a sell sheet. But even the publishers who don’t require an overview video highly recommend one.

Above is Spill the Beans’ Overview Video. It’s bare bones, but I believe it’s effective. One of our writers, Season, narrates, and you’ll see similarities between the Overview Video and Sell Sheet. Sure, Season goes into the rules in a little more detail, but she really only adds what triggers the end of the game and scoring. Honestly, overview videos help folks who may be more visual learners. A Sell Sheet can only do so much. Overview Videos take the concept further.

A special shoutout to Kenneth Turner at Nerds Making Nerdy Things. Kenneth made the physical design for Spill the Beans’ spilling cup. Nerds Making Nerdy Things takes special orders. If you have an idea for a board game peripheral or even an art project like a shadowbox, feel free to contact Nerds.

I thought of Kenneth while looking at Season handling the Spill the Beans cup. Getting back to the Overview Video, you’ll need several of the same elements you’ll find in a Sell Sheet: the name of your game, the player count and approximate length (like you’ll find in demographics), the theme, the roles players take (if any), the objective, and what players do on their turn and throughout the game, which can include what triggers the end of the game and scoring. Again, we don’t include the full rules. For the fourth or fifth time, that’s why we have a rulebook. You don’t need to include fancy animations or cut-ins. The video above is simple. You also don’t want to talk too much. Show, don’t tell. Season did a good job of avoiding wordiness.

I’ve submitted Spill the Beans to board game publishers. I don’t know if I can share the names of those publishers here yet or not, so they’ll remain anonymous–for now. I’d prefer a program for board game submission that’s similar to Duotrope in the literary world, where submitters share their experiences with publishers (how long the publisher took to give a response, if they ever gave a response) in an attempt to catalogue publishers and their tendencies. I may just create one. But that’s a problem for future Kyra.

Great Plains Gaming Festival

I was triple-booked the weekend of Great Plains Gaming Festival (GPGF), so I didn’t show up for much of the convention. Friday was my big day. But my games attended GPGF all three days as part of the Playtest to Win event. In short, I was a little disappointed. My games didn’t get checked out as much as I would’ve liked. But I can honestly say Spill the Beans, Whirligig Pets, and No Kings were blind playtested. Gamers played these games by reading the rules.

I wasn’t there to explain anything. Heck! I couldn’t be there to explain anything. Spill the Beans and Whirligig Pets are ready for publication. Will they see tweaks in the future? Sure, but the core games are solid. And except for No Kings, the rulebooks make sense. No Kings needs some work to put it mildly. But yay! I can submit the other two with confidence.

My Future Events

I have so many upcoming gaming events in the coming months. You can stop by at any of these and say hi or convince me to play a game or a dozen.

Nuke-Con’s Aftershock Event: May 16, 2026 (I’ll be working one of the tables)
Omaha Gaming Convention: July 10-12, 2026 (I won’t be working this one, but I will be in attendance; let’s get our game on)
Omaha Pride: July 17, 2026 (I’ll be running games for Pride)
O-Con: July 17-19, 2026 (at the Extra Life table; I double-booked myself again, oops–I can’t calendar)

And I think that’s it for the coming months. It’s a little early to advertise Nuke-Con in October. But that’s all I have for today’s Board Game Design Brain Dump. Hopefully, this means I’m back to doing these on a more regular basis. Thank you for reading, and wherever you are, I hope you’re having a great day.

Tag: #amsubmitting

Personal Update Wednesday: April 29, 2026