The Diana Jones Award Committee is pleased to announce our 2022 Emerging Designer Program Winner is momatoes! As our Emerging Designer, she’ll receive an expenses-paid trip to Gen Con.
momatoes
Twitter: @momatoes
Website: momatoes.com
Games: momatoes.itch.io
momatoes — also known in real life as Bianca Canoza — is an auteur tabletop game and visual designer from the explosive Southeast Asian RPG scene. She wrote, designed, illustrated, and laid out ARC: Doom, hailed as one of the best indie tabletop RPGs in 2021, as well as The Magus, a journaling game about desperate, mystical ambition. Her works have been celebrated for inspiring creative play and emotional resonance and have been translated into Italian, Japanese, French, as well as Polish.
momatoes’ passions are rooted in positive impact and multimedia, interactive and narrative design. She built and maintains the Across RPGSEA website, connecting and promoting indie works by Southeast Asians, and establishing a living archive of works of a creative people amid a rapidly-moving industry.
Emerging Designer Program Finalists
The committee would also like to congratulate our excellent finalists:
Fertessa Allyse
Twitter: @fertessa
Website: boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/130905/fertessa-allyse
Fertessa Allyse is a southern game designer who is now spreading her wings on the west coast. She loved games before she knew there was a hobby or an industry around it. Over three years she made and signed three games before getting hired as a game producer for Funko Games. Her games try to bridge the gap between mass market and hobby games, with a style emphasizing laughter and table talk.
She didn’t find modern games until she was an adult, and so aspires to bring modern board games to a wider audience. Over the last few years she served as a member of the Unpub Board, a mentor for the Indie Game Designer Network, and wrote for Girls Game Shelf. More recently she mentors aspiring game designers, speaks publicly about board games and game design, and contributes regularly to OFPG Voices to help make game design more approachable.
Nick Butler
Twitter: @FallOnMyBlade
Website: tidebreakerrpg.com
Hailing from Middletown, CT, Nick Butler is a game designer, content creator, and writer. Nick’s work excels in genre emulation, providing interesting choices, and player empowerment. His work has been (or will soon be) featured in the Far Horizons Co Op and Chris Bissete’s d36 zine with more projects on the way. Find his flagship title, Tide Breaker at tidebreakerrpg.com.
Miguel Angel Espinoza
Twitter: @xantolorpg
Website: smokingmirrorgames.com
Miguel Angel Espinoza is a Mexican game designer, graphic designer, illustrator, and programmer. He’s director of visual design at Magpie Games, and has done layout work for various companies, including: Gallant Knight Games, Unicorn Motorcycle Games, Nocturnal Media, John Wick Presents, Magpie Games, among others. As a writer, he has participated in Cities in Shadow and Tiny Dungeon 2E by Gallant Knight Games, as well as designing and writing for Cartel, Urban Shadows 2E and Avatar Legends by Magpie Games.
He recently published his first game design project Nahual, a Mexican role-playing game about shapeshifters that hunt angels to make a living. He’s also working on translating licensed RPGs into Spanish, to publish them for the Latin American audiences. You can find him on Twitter @xantolorpg
Julio E. Nazario
Twitter: @Junazaru
Website: boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/121932/julio-e-nazario
Julio E. Nazario is a designer originally from Ponce, Puerto Rico, currently based in Asheville, North Carolina where he started a chapter of the Game Designers of North Carolina. He came into the scene in 2017 when he started showing his out of the box design thinking of using verticality and all components of a game as part of the game, especially the box. His first published games Holi: Festival of Colors from Floodgate Games and CTRL from Pandasaurus Games were released in 2020 featured this design style. Both games showed some stunning table presence that was not just visual, but incorporated into competitive puzzle play in three dimensions.
Julio has been a Co-Host in the Building the Game Podcast for the last three years where he always brings topics to the table that not many designers are discussing. These topics include cultural appropriation in games, costs of designing, rejection in the industry and even what design contracts should include. He was also in the 2021 Edition of the MOJO Nation 100 most influential figures working in toy and game design, where they called his designs “Unique, innovative and a true breath of fresh air in the tabletop space”.
These days GMT Games Publisher has announced P500 for a historical game featuring the Native Taino from his homeland Puerto Rico and their story before, during and after the arrival of the Spanish in the 15th and 16th century. While outside Julio’s design wheelhouse he decided to use his skills to teach about the origin of his culture in an interactive and entertaining format. Make sure to keep an eye out for many of his other designs coming soon including Dulce from Stronghold Games and Peanut Butter Belly Time from new to the industry peanut butter making company Nerdy Nuts. It goes without saying that Julio is a designer to keep in your radar and we look forward to seeing what the future has in store for him in our industry.
Sara Thompson
Twitter: @mustangsart
Combat Wheelchair: tinyurl.com/yysv67xm
Patreon: patreon.com/mustangsart
Sara Thompson (‘mustangsart’) is a disabled freelance writer and game designer. They are the creator of the Combat Wheelchair homebrew ruleset for 5th Edition and place an emphasis on not only making games accessible, but also positive representation of disabled, chronically ill, and neurodivergent people. They have worked for Paizo (Pathfinder 2e, Starfinder), R. Talsorian Games (The Witcher Pen & Paper, Cyberpunk RED, Castle Falkenstein), Wizards of the Coast (Magic: The Gathering fiction), SteamForged Games (Bardsung), Red Scar Gaming (Hellboy: The Official Roleplaying Game), and have featured in ARCADIA (Issue 7) as well as many independent projects.
The Combat Wheelchair is set to enter its 4th edition this Summer, celebrating its 3 year anniversary. The ruleset has been featured on D&D actual play streams, Critical Role and Rivals of Waterdeep, as well as appearing in an official character for D&D idle game Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms with Talin Uran – a tiefling rogue and personal D&D character of Sara’s, who has since become a mascot of sorts for the ruleset. Official miniatures of the Combat Wheelchair have been made in a partnership with miniatures company Strata Miniatures. All profits from this are split with 25% going to charity Ehlers Danlos UK and the rest solely to printing and casting them. Ehlers Danlos UK is Sara’s charity of choice as they aim to spread awareness of Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (EDS), its many types, and related conditions such as hypermobility syndrome.
Sara can be found on their Twitter @mustangsart, sharing processes behind their game design, disability representation, life as a disabled person, and often discussing the latest Star Wars and The Witcher news. They strive to continue making their work accessible, representative, readily available, and, most of all, fun. Because anyone can be a hero, and our games and tables should reflect that.
ABOUT THE EMERGING DESIGNER PROGRAM
This program of the Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming amplifies the voices of up-and-coming hobby game designers, with a focus on creators from marginalized communities, by featuring them during an expenses-paid trip to Gen Con. Its inaugural year was 2021, when Jeeyon Shim was our first Diana Jones Emerging Designer.
For more information about our previous winners and finalists, see the 2021 Emerging Designer page.
CONTACTS
Questions? Please reach out to the program’s coordinators at edp@dianajonesaward.org. To contact the Diana Jones Award Committee, email committee@dianajonesaward.org.
SPONSORS
We’d like to thank the sponsors of this year’s Emerging Designer Program for their support:
- 2CGaming
- Camdon Wright
- David Chart
- Geoffrey Engelstein
- Gen Con
- Magpie Games
- Monte Cook Games
- Noble Knight Games
- R. Talsorian Games
- Renegade Games
- RPG Creators Relief Fund