Snakes and Ladders (or The Golden Cobra Challenge)

I'm looking at the Golden Cobra Challenge entries for 2014 and 2015.

This is an indi, freeform game contest that is very broad in the games included.  "Freeform" is a pretty broad category, and pretty mushy as definitions and boundaries go.  But as a creative space, it is I think worth looking at as useful learning can come of good and... not so good examples.

The criteria for 2014 required entries:

1. Be playable from start to finish in two hours or less. 
2. Be playable by a variable but small number of participants, ideally a wide range like 2-8. 
3. Be playable in a public space, like an open lounge in a busy hallway. 
4. Optionally, use the ingredients Chord, Light, Solution, Bear and Minute. 

Golden Cobras were awarded in four categories: Most Convention-Ready (Group Date, page 290), Most Appealing to Newcomers (Unheroes, page 551), Cleverest Design (Glitch Iteration, page 248) and Game We’re Most Eager to Play (Still Life, page 507).

The 2015 criteria required entries:

1. Be a new, unpublished freeform larp. It is neither a tabletop roleplaying game or a video game, although it may approach or incorporate either. 
2. Your name can only appear on one entry but teams are welcome. 
3. Submit your game by 30 October in .pdf format and in English to submissions@goldencobra.org. Parallel versions in other languages or other formats are encouraged. 
4. Present your game in a playable format. If it needs handouts, they must be included. 
5. Games playable in public will earn the warm regard of the judges but are not required. 
6. Games with zero players must abide by the contest rules. 
7. You retain all rights to your work but grant the judges permission to print out and play the game you submit, and for it to be included in a free anthology after the contest. 

THE GOAL OF THE 2015 CONTEST WAS TO GENERATE SMALL, INTENSE, PERSONAL GAMES. GOLDEN COBRAS WERE AWARDED IN SIX CATEGORIES: 
• Best use of themes/techniques for evoking empathy (Just Lunch, page 338) • Best incorporation of perspectives of unheard or marginalized people or groups (Too Much Slap On The Ecaf, page 485) • Best incorporation of touch (A Crow Funeral, page 100) • Game we’re most excited about (This Folks At The Dining Room, page 442) • Most polished and ready-to-play game (Her Inner Dead Ends (Hide), page 226) • Cobra Crew Pick (The Lofty Beacons, page 349)

* * *

All in all, looking over these games, I see very few that I actually would play or want to play.  They are rife with some things that seem to be at odds; on the one hand, there are many that are interested in exploring "transgressive" ideas and themes, some with an almost fetishistic vigor.  And yet on the other, with an almost neurotic fragility, is the constant requirement to have "safe spaces" and "boundaries" and "x-cards".  It seems to me that many of them are about fairly post-modern liberal efforts to affirm personal guilt, subvert it as something to be celebrated, and then put blame on the benighted traditionalists for not being accepting.

Sigh...

I did like A Crow Funeral though.

I think the most valuable thing about looking at these, is the creativity of making a game rather than the banality of so many of the themes.  Using different kinds of touch as mechanics for resolution, or rules on when and how different players can speak, or relative positions (e.g. sitting, standing, reclining) as an indicator of role, or movement in a play-space and non-player intrusion as a randomizer.  These are the things that make it interesting as a read for learning.  If you take the card game "Mao" and take away the cards, and then find another mechanic for interacting you get an idea of the kind of creativity that can be used to make a freeform game.