GOTY: Game Of The Year 2027

In GOTY: Game Of The Year, you will collectively try to design this game. The board starts with some unpolished mechanical ideas, which, over the course of the game you can improve. You will choose how to select the actions, what these actions do, what's to be scored at the end of the game, and even which components the game needs. The changes you collectively make to the game, and even the order in which you make them, will have a huge impact on how the game plays. You may create a completely different experience on every game you play.

While doing this, you will also be playtesting the game as it evolves, giving feedback to your co-designers about their changes on the game, gaining ideas about how to change the game, and also, trying to outscore them on the game you are all creating. The winner will be considered the main designer of the game, and it will be decided based on a combination of your contributions to the design decisions of the game, and the score you achieve while playtesting the game.

Game Structure Each player has two different scoring markers on the score track. One of them tracks your designer score, which will increase as you add and modify new parts to the game. Whoever has more designer points at the end of the game will be considered the main designer and the winner.

The other one tracks the score on the game you are creating, and it will increase based on the actions taken in the game itself. While this marker does not decide the winner of the game, mastering your own game will give you a better insight about how it works, which will help you with your design decisions and may increase your designer score at the end of the game.

The game lasts an indefinite number of rounds, which will usually be less than 10. On each round, each player takes a turn, starting with the player with the starting player token, and following in clockwise order. Turns are divided in two different phases, the first one is the designer phase where you will modify the game itself and the second one is the playtesting phase wher you will actually play the game you are designing. The end of the game is triggered whenever any score marker reaches the 50th space of the score track, or whenever any player removes the last action tile from their board.

—description from the publisher