URBANA — The Champaign Urbana Design Organization (CUDO) cultivates a wealth of creativity in its annual board competition, CUDO Plays, from tabletop games about corgis having parties to color-coded Jenga to Globetrotting, a recently published game where you plan three vacations around the world.
Andrew Stengele, a board member of CUDO, said the competition process runs for half of the year, from August to March.
“I like to refer to CUDO Plays as a board game design community that runs a competition because we support people [participants] before, during and after the competition,” he said.
Throughout the competition, participants of all ages create their games during a series of workshops.
“We help them brainstorm ideas. We help them come up with what the game actually is, we help them play-test it,” Stengele said. “We help them build it. We have workshops for how to write your rules, how to market the game after you’re done with it — everything.”
CUDO has a pretty dedicated group of participants that come back to make new games each year, he said. The competition produces a variety of games from what Stengele calls “crunchy strategy games” to more accessible family games, one of which is called “Rainbow Rise,”a game in which you aim to stack a bunch of colored cubes, It’s similar to Jenga, in that you don’t want to knock over the tower, but it has one crucial difference.
“Because the cubes are different colors, there’s certain ways you have to place them,” Stengele said. “They have to either be the same color, or if it’s a compound color like purple, it needs to touch a red and blue at the same time.”
Another game included in this season is called “Party Corgis,” made by participant and video game designer Alex Cline, who said he has been working on the competitive card-collecting game, on and off, for the last seven years.
“Basically everyone is having a party and trying to attract corgis to their party and you use party favors to attract those with those interests,” Cline said. “So if a corgi wants a balloon and treats, you play those and the corgi comes to your party.”
Cline said he thinks board games have a sense of community that video games lack.
“There’s the internet, people communicate and self-congregate on Discord based on the games they play,” Cline said. “But with tabletop games there is a level of immediate comradery when you’re around the table.”
Stengele said he thinks the board game community enjoys its analog aspect, especially post-COVID.
“That’s part of the appeal of board game, is that you grab the box, you set it down, and there’s the game,” Stengele said. “You don’t have to download anything or install it.”
The competition attracts contestants of all ages, he said, as well as players of all ages.
“This year we have a few teams that are kids, or sometimes kids and their parents together as a team,” Stengele said. “We’ve got preteens, teens […] etc., all the way up to [retired people] making games for their grandkids.”
The CUDO Plays Season 11 Grand Exhibition will be held at the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center on Saturday at 1 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.