Protospiel Online

Protospiel Bingo

In partnership with Maxine and Randy Ekl of Clever Playing Cards, Protospiel Bingo is included in Protospiel Online!

Protospiel Bingo was first launched at Protospiel Chicago 2019. The attendees had a lot of fun with it — and gave some good feedback for the next iteration. In March of 2020, Maxine and Randy partnered with Protospiel Denver to run it for the second time at an in-person Protospiel.

This very meta metagame was a huge hit with Protospiel Denver attendees. It generated a lot of fun conversation and gave our attendees an incentive to playtest as many games as possible. After seeing how much our in-person attendees enjoyed the experience, we wanted to find a way to bring it to our Online attendees — with a few adjustments.

The Bingo Protospielians Know and Love

As we did with the in-person version, each attendee will get a Bingo card with a unique combo of prototype aspects to look for. They’ll use the same card for the entire session of Protospiel Online their badge gives them access to.

Players can only fill in a square if they playtest or give sell sheet feedback on another designer’s game, so all attendees will have a little extra incentive to share the playtesting and feedback love.

When filling in a square, most info that isn’t purely opinion-based is available in the game’s #looking-for-a-game Players Wanted post, #sell-sheet-list post, or in the designer’s Discord server profile (if they’ve added self-assignable tags to share their interests.)

The things shown on a card can match the 🔍Game Description (B), 🎉Game Achievements (I), 💭Game Impressions (N), 🤓Designer(s) (G), or♟️Components (O) of a prototype a Bingo participant playtests or reviews a sell sheet for. The squares in the I & N columns directly reference playtest experiences, so players need to find squares in the B, G, & O columns to fill in for sell sheet feedback.

Here’s an example Bingo card to give a better idea of the types of aspects we call out.

5x5 grid with B-I-N-G-O letters labeling each column across the top. The B column has 5 items marked with a magnifying glass: low luck, play time over 60 Min, light-hearted game, casual weight, and heavy weight. The I column has 5 item labeled with a party popper: played the bad guy, played w/ 3 other players, would have won with one more turn, came in second place, and played with 1 other player. The N column has 5 items labeled with a thought bubble: snappy turns, inspired me, first playtest of the weekend, great for parties, and interesting decisions. The G column has 5 items labeled with a nerd face: designer on team diamonds, designer first name starts with R-V, designer first is a heavy gamer, designer first name starts with W-Z, and designer is a medium gamer. The O column has 5 items labeled with a chess pawn: tokens, player aid, writing/drawing on board, automated setup, and hidden information.

To make this metagame extra fun, when a Bingo player submits a PDF or image file of a completed card, they earn entries to our random drawing giveaways — with extra entries for every winning Bingo pattern. See our Discord Giveaways thread for full details on entry count breakdowns and prizes for the current session.

Bringing Protospiel Bingo Online

To make remote play possible, we found an existing online Bingo card builder and customized it to create Bingo cards full of prototype aspects.

Based on the way this tool works, we set each of the 5 types of prototype characteristics to show up in a specific column on the Bingo card.

One cool perk of using an online Bingo system is that players can refresh their starting Bingo card until they see a mix of prototype aspects they are excited to seek out. We ask that players only refresh the mix on their Bingo cards before they record any squares so that all their activities will be on one card. Players can only turn in one Bingo card for giveaway entries, and only the card they’ve created last will stay in the list of active cards.

When we play Protospiel Bingo in person, playtesters ask the designer of the prototype they’re recording to initial the applicable square on their printed Bingo card. For Protospiel Online Bingo, we have to operate on the honor system. As with in-person Bingo, players are expected to mark one square per prototype.

Since this Bingo game is on the honor system, we’ve made sure everyone has an equal chance to win a prize, no matter how quickly they get their winning Bingo pattern. All prize drawings happen during a livestream after the event.

The Protospiel Bingo cards we used in person had random locations for the “Any Prototype” free space. For the online version, all the cards have their free space in the center, and we’ve changed the free space to “First Playtest of the Weekend” to make that first square extra easy to fill. We know playtests often take longer to get through on virtual tabletops than they do in person, so we’re hoping the free center square will increase the chances players can get a winning Bingo pattern.

Lastly, instead of visiting the registration desk and walking away with a prize, players must use our online submission form to send us their Bingo card by the Sunday following Protospiel Online weekend at 11:59pm US Eastern Time. (7 days after the convention ends).

Players don’t need to attend the giveaway Twitch stream live or participate in the livestream chat to win prizes off of their earned giveaway entries, but we do give a separate set of prizes away through games we play with our live viewers. 🙂

We are always happy to accept more prizes to be featured in a giveaway livestream for a convention session. Contact us if you have a prize you’d like to donate for our next round.