The ten questions a publisher asks, and the shape of each answer.
A publisher meeting is twenty minutes, and the publisher asks the same questions in roughly the same order whatever the game. The designers who come out of those meetings with a follow-up email did not pitch better games; they had written the answer to each question down beforehand, one or two sentences, from their own logs. These are the ten, with the shape of a good answer and the worked examples from the invented Tidewrack pack.
1. What is it?
The 15-second hook: the kind of game, the players, the time, the pull. “Tidewrack is a 45-minute set-collection game for two to four players about beachcombers salvaging after storms. Every tile you take pushes the tide in for everyone, so the whole table shares one timer and everyone keeps making it worse.” If the hook needs a second breath, it is not done yet.
2. What does a turn look like?
One round shown, not the rules from setup. Flip a storm card: six tiles wash up. Walk your beachcomber down the beach, pick up what you want, and every tile anyone takes moves the tide marker. The instinct to start at setup is the one your own testers already punished — the pack’s script starts mid-round because that is where the game is.
3. What is the one decision?
Keep walking for the better tile, or bank what you carry before the tide takes it. One decision, stated plainly, is the proof there is a game in the box. A list of mechanisms is the proof there is a box.
4. What does it play like?
The comparison — held until they ask. “Incan Gold’s push-your-luck inside Cascadia’s tile-and-tableau scoring, with the timer shared.” Asked for, it places the game on a shelf they know; volunteered first, it replaces your game with two other people’s. The pack keeps it under question four, not in the hook.
5. How long does it really run?
The logged range: “38 to 52 minutes over the last ten plays.” Not the number you hope to print on the box. A range tells a publisher you keep a log, and the log is the thing they trust.
6. What is the best player count?
The honest answer, including the one you would not print. Tidewrack’s pack says three and four, and flags it as a question to confirm from the logs — because the publisher will ask at the demo table, and the designer who already knows reads as a designer who playtests.
7. How many playtests, and where?
As logged, blind tests counted separately, clubs or events named. Thirty-one logged with two clubs named beats “over fifty” every time, because the publisher who runs playtests can smell a rounded number — and one follow-up question is all it takes.
8. What is in the box?
The counts: 60 tiles, 24 storm cards, four beachcomber meeples, the tide track and marker, four hut boards. The publisher is pricing manufacture while you talk; a component list with counts lets them, and “lovely bits” does not.
9. Where does it sit?
The slot it fills on their list, in their terms: a 45-minute family-plus game that teaches in five minutes, for the shelf between the fillers and the mid-weights. Their list has gaps. Name the one you fill, and do not claim three.
10. What do you want, and where does it stand?
Prototype version, whether the rules are final, whether the art is placeholder and whether you are open to their art direction, who else has it. Asked last, answered plainly. “Prototype v8, rules final for this count range, art is mine but placeholder, two other publishers have the sheet” is a complete answer, and the honesty is the pitch.
The worked example
The invented Tidewrack pack on the sample page was written from a designer’s 500-word brain-dump email, and it answers all ten in the designer’s own facts: the hook, the two-minute script that shows one round, the one-page pitch, and the ten answers — including the awkward ones the designer flagged themselves. Nothing in the pack that the email did not say.
Three questions.
Do I memorise the ten answers?
No — you read them the night before and again in the queue. The point is that each answer exists, in your own words, one or two sentences long. A written answer you half-remember still beats an answer you compose at the table.
What if I don’t have an answer — no blind playtests, art not started?
Say the true thing plainly: “No blind tests yet; twelve logged with my own group.” A publisher hears a gap you name as a stage; a gap they discover reads as a hole. The pack flags your open questions rather than papering over them.
Should the comparison go in the one-page pitch?
No. The one-page pitch says what the game is in its own terms; the comparison is a spoken answer you give when asked. On paper, a comparison does the shelf’s work in the wrong direction — it files your game under two other games.
Get the sample pitch pack first
The invented Tidewrack pack: the designer’s email and the finished pitch as a PDF, and our one-page list of the ten questions a publisher asks and the order the one-page pitch goes in.
Download the ten-questions list now (PDF, one page, 175 KB) — no email needed.
Your 15-second hook, two-minute script, one-page pitch and the ten answers, written from your own notes within two days, $39 / £31 incl. VAT / A$59 / C$55. Nothing added that you did not give; we contact no publisher for you.