I hope everyone had a nice Easter, and that you all survived the traditional chocolate binge. After the giant campaign of last week, it's nice to get back to some smaller projects this week. 'Santorini' is making its way to Kickstarter with a deluxe edition and IV Studios, the creators of 'Mythic Mischief', are returning to crowdfunding with their new project 'Fractured Sky'. The other projects featured this week all look awesome! It's a good week for the board game hobby. Remember, back with your head, not your heart and most importantly, love your games.
Santorini is a re-imagining of the purely abstract 2004 edition. Since its original inception over 30 years ago, Santorini has been continually developed, enhanced and refined by designer Gordon Hamilton.
Santorini is an accessible strategy game, simple enough for an elementary school classroom while aiming to provide gameplay depth and content for hardcore gamers to explore, The rules are simple. Each turn consists of 2 steps:
1. Move - move one of your builders into a neighbouring space. You may move your Builder Pawn on the same level, step-up one level, or step down any number of levels.
2. Build - Then construct a building level adjacent to the builder you moved. When building on top of the third level, place a dome instead, removing that space from play.
Winning the game - If either of your builders reaches the third level, you win.
Variable player powers - Santorini features variable player powers layered over an otherwise abstract game, with 40 thematic god and hero powers that fundamentally change the way the game is played.
Fractured Sky is a game of deduction, sneaky strategy, and resource management set on a fantastical island. Players lead their kingdom in the hunt for shards of fractured falling stars, which are rumoured to grant wishes to those that can amass enough of them.
Using airships, players send their armies to regions with the star shards, but finding those is not always easy and hiring seers to predict their falls can be worth the investment. Over time, players will increase their presence on the island, placing permanent buildings to give them advantages like extra resources or increasing the size of their troop numbers.
Only one wish will be granted, so who will amass the most shards before the final star falls?
Explore the forest floor through the changing seasons and discover a wondrous array of fungi. As a mycologist, you'll collect and classify a wide array of real fungi from around the world by collecting the resources they need to grow.
Roll dice to collect resources as you move through the seasons. Use resources to fill your basket with mushroom cards, which are worth points at the end of the game. Be careful when collecting poison mushrooms, as they may hurt your score! The game ends once a player has completely filled their basket.
Mycology is a fun and approachable game for all ages and experience levels, is for 2-6 players, and plays in 45-60 minutes. Perfect for a cosy afternoon - perhaps with a steaming mug of mushroom soup!
Welcome to Taiwan Night Market, the paradise for street food lovers! In this game, you play as an ambitious vendor trying to make a fortune by bidding on the best locations for your stalls and attract customers with your most delicious food. Can you outwit your competitors and be crowned the king of the night market vendors?
In Taiwan Night Market, every round you bid on the locations on the map and open stalls of 4 types of food and drink. If you can connect stalls of the same type together, they will earn you more!
Then, the customers will swamp in and buy the food they want at the first available stall they encounter. The locations are crucial for the traffic of customers, but bidding at the right amount is critical to win. At the end of the game, the player with the most money wins!
Thorgal: The Board Game is a cooperative storybook adventure game for 1-4 players aged 14+ designed by Joanna Kijanka, Jan Maurycy, and Rafał Szyma. Players take on the roles of Thorgal, his wife Aaricia, their son Jolan, and Kriss - a deadly female warrior, and go on a series of adventures.
The game consists of 7 stand-alone scenarios, each taking roughly 90-120 minutes of play. Scenarios do NOT form a campaign nor have any legacy features, so they can be played by different playgroups and over an extended period of time.
Thorgal: The Board Game comes with a book of maps. Each scenario is played on a different map that players explore while fulfilling scenario goals and promises completely different adventures, hidden opportunities, and vivid characters. Players are free to choose whether they travel in one group or split to cover more areas at the same time. They also perform side quests that might help them win a scenario.
Another important feature in the game is the storybook containing narrative descriptions of the encounters that Characters make in each scenario. The adventures described in the book are specific to each scenario and Character, yet a lot of them are randomized within a scenario, offering higher replay ability and allowing for repeated play. There are also Side Plots players can pursue to gain benefits and reveal additional pieces of the story.
Thorgal: The Board Game, while having a strong narrative element, offers a brand new, unique action selection mechanism. In this new mechanism, actions have various power depending on which other actions have already been taken. Players carefully plan their strategy and sequence of actions taken, as this directly impacts the strength of the effect of each action. This creates an interesting decision space and makes each turn important for everyone at the table.
Another important mechanic involves Character development. Each character gains experience during the game and advances their abilities. This dynamic progress allows players to make meaningful decisions about how to develop their hero in the game. Characters gather resources and craft objects to help them survive in the dangerous world.
Conspiracy is an upcoming card game released in spring 2023, on Kickstarter. It is a fun, fast-paced tableau-builder for those who wanna try what it's like to be a conspiracy theory believer.
Chose your core conspiracy (card) and build your unique theory around it by winning news (cards) and explaining how those fit your theory. (Don't worry explanation is optional and you can skip it by playing the game in Flat Earther variant.) Each conspiracy card gives a special ability to its believer. Use it wisely to become more influential than your rivals and their childish tales.
In Conspiracy, each player acts simultaneously during the two rounds of a turn. There are three types of action they can choose from: action card drawing, playing an action card, and flipping a news card. Action cards give you some useful abilities and influence among the believers. The most influential wins the actual news (card) at the end of the turn. By your clairvoyance ability, you can flip your news cards to see the hidden message between the lines and get a useful bonus.
A player wins and the game ends when any player reaches the given number of followers and is able to keep them until the end of the turn.
Conspiracy offers a cooperative and a solo mode as well where you can work together (or alone) to uncover the shadow government before it's too late. Merge your conspiracy cards to the ultimate great grandfathers of all conspiracy theories and play action cards side by side against the shadow government cards to win the actual news (card), protect your theory and your hands.
In cooperative mode, the game ends when the players reach the given number of followers and keep them until the end of the turn or when the shadow government deck is depleted.
The core mechanics of the game are: hand management, flipping a card, bid, tableau building, variable player powers, and narrative building.
THEY LOOK LIKE US. THEY SOUND LIKE US. BUT THEY ARE NOT HUMAN!
They Live: The Card Game – Save The City/Enslave The City is an asymmetrical multiplayer card focused on strategy, teamwork, and deceit. Working collectively is the only way to survive, but not everyone is playing for the same team…
Hidden among the group are secret Invaders determined to capture the city. The humans outnumber them, but the Invaders have the advantage of knowing what the teams are. You will start losing health shortly after the game begins, there is no avoiding it. you must act fast!
Each turn begins with new resources being drawn to the middle of the table. These include weapons, ammunition, city parts and more. Players take turns to take and equip any cards they need.
Beware! Enemies can be drawn with the resources, and you will have to battle them as a group. But who isn’t helping enough? Who is letting the enemies pass? Is it because they are low on health, low on weapons, or are they secretly an Invader trying to sabotage you all?
The more damage you take, the closer your character comes to their critical health value. When critical, other players can use their Hoffman Lenses cards to inspect you and find out your true identity.
Do you suspect somebody of being an Invader? You could attack them, reduce them to critical, then check their identity card to be sure. Or maybe you are an Invader, and you want to attack another player and then lie about what you saw on their card.
As Invaders, your goal is to enslave the city. You must stay hidden, act human, and try to collect the city cards to capture different areas of the city. The more you hold, the closer you are to winning.
As Humans, your goal is to work out who among the team is an Invader. You need to take them down before it’s too late!
The Roll-With-It System is a roll-and-write adventure game system featuring thematic variety and endless adventure possibilities due to its flexible core rules system.
The system's basic rules provide a “skeleton” rules framework on which all of the adventure modules are structured. Each adventure module puts the “flesh” on the rules with theme and creative new mechanisms.
The Roll-With-It Fantasy Boxed Set includes all six adventure modules in the Fantasy series:
Fortress of Terror
Temple of Despair
Maze of the Minotaur
Lake of the Dragon
Pyramid of the Mummy
Mines of Darkness
The first 2023 Scott Almes Simply Solo games is The Royal Limited, a hand management game of placing fancy train cars, loading them up with fancy passengers, and trying to leave on time. It'll also be our second Wes Anderson influenced game, if you couldn't already tell from the title and the logo.
You operate the most well-known luxury train on the continent. To win, you must outfit your train with the right cars, call on the best passengers, and - most of all - leave on time!
You will play in a series of rounds, with your goal to build a train and fill it with passengers. Each round will take the following format:
1. Draw cards 2. Play cards to add a cars, place passengers and VIPs 3. Discard hand & advance conductor.
After you have finished the final round (All Aboard!) then you should calculate your score. You want a lower score, according to certain values.