The sample sheet: Lantern Tide.
An invented game: a 2–4 player tile-placement game about a lighthouse keeper, prototype v6, 31 logged playtests, art placeholder. The sheet is written from the notes on the home page; nothing below is on it that the notes did not say.
The hook.
Keep the light burning. Bring every ship home.
The overview.
Lantern Tide is a tile-placement game about a stretch of coast with one lighthouse and too many ships. Each round a tide card tells you which ships are coming and how fast; you lay beam tiles to light channels, collect the ships you guide in as sets, and spend oil to keep the lantern burning. The oil runs out at the end of round eight. The player with the most complete sets wins, but a ship wrecked on your stretch of coast costs you a set.
Three selling points.
1. One decision a turn: light a channel or save the oil. The tide deck makes the same choice feel different every round.
2. Shared timer, individual scores. Everyone wants the lantern lit; nobody wants to pay for it.
3. Teaches in five minutes from the rulebook's first page; a four-player game has ended in 42 minutes in every timed playtest the designer has run.
Components and status.
64 beam tiles, 48 ship cards, 24 tide cards, 4 keeper boards, 40 oil tokens, 1 lantern track, rulebook, 8 pages
Prototype at version 6. 31 blind playtests across two clubs and one convention weekend, logged by the designer. Rules and components final; art is placeholder; open to a publisher's art direction.
What we did not write, and why.
• No other game is named as a comparison: a publisher knows the shelf better than we do, and a wrong comparison closes the folder.
• No award, review or quote: the designer supplied none, so none appears.
• No retail price, print cost or sales projection: those are the publisher's numbers, and a sell sheet that guesses them reads as inexperience.
• The playtest count is printed as the designer logged it (31) and labelled as supplied; we did not round it up.
Download the sample PDF Make my sell sheet →
The real sheet is written from your own facts and laid out with your own art; the shape is the same.