This week’s Crowdfunding Round-Up sees the return of Skulk Hollow and its successor Maul peek. I must admit I’m pretty excited for this one. I didn’t get the chance to play Skulk hollow so I will be all in on this one.
Route East looks really cool and I have seen a great deal of buzz surrounding this game. With its colourful graphic design and seemingly easy and fun game play, I’m still on the fence but can feel myself tipping.
Check out these projects and let me know if you back any.

BILLOWING SMOKE FROM THE NORTH As battles wage through Skulk Hollow, a thick, dark, haze appears around Maul Peak. The smell of war wafts down through the valley as clouds of wrath engulf towns and villages. As fate spreads the smoke far and wide, destruction follows. A foxen scout, their fastest, is hastily dispatched to learn more...
GAMEPLAY Maul Peak is a 2-player, asymmetric, tactical combat game where players take the roles of either a tribe of bears or a towering behemoth of a Guardian.
Maul Peak is a stand-alone sequel to the original Skulk Hollow, however all Guardians / Heroes can be pitted against each other. All new guardians work with the original Foxen Heroes & Map, Bears vs old Guardians, Bears vs new Guardians - you name it!
Combining the two games also allows up to 4 players to pit 2 guardians vs both bear and foxen heroes for Epic Battles.
One vs Many Asymmetric Combat creates a fresh, fun, 2-player experience.
Action takes place on the Board AND the Guardian. Not only does the battle occur on the Kingdom board, but the bear must traverse full size, Guardian gameboards. Each guardian has unique routes and abilities to stop the bears.
Dual Purpose Cards give players a wide range of movement and ability powers while keeping them quick to pick and easy to play.
Unique Bear Leaders and Guardians creates a range of tactics and dynamics, adding depth and strategy that makes each game a new challenge.

Race from Istanbul to Shanghai in an incredibly fun board game filled with tense gaming frustration, strategy and co-player vendettas.
Based on a trip of a lifetime, Route East takes players across mountains, valleys, and stunning wonders of the less explored areas of the world while testing their planning and cunning skills.
This game focuses on a wide customer base - having something for both hardcore and casual players, aged 11+.
At the start of each turn, you pick an Ignition card and then you play your three moves. How you play them is up to you - you might decide to move on the board, or pick or play Action Cards that will give you various advantages throughout the game. You might also have to roll the dice to move depending on the circumstances.
Plan your route through must-see attractions along the way, and develop a strategy based on budget, fuel, cunning and pure foul play! First one to Shanghai, you got it, wins!
It won’t be easy. Did we mention this before? 1) you’ll definitely not have enough money - that’s guaranteed 2) Your teammates will steal from you, bribe their way through borders, and damage your car so badly you’ll be stuck for days without moves 3) Early front-runners get the brunt of abuse - have you not heard that slow and steady wins the race? 4) Play dirty or be kind. Become your competitors’ best ally or screw everyone over and make a dash for the finish.
You'll need an equal mix of skill, planning, and bloody savviness to get to Shanghai first.

Motor City is a strategic roll-and-write game about running an auto plant in the heydey of Detroit.
In Motor City, you have two player sheets, each with multiple areas.
These areas are represented by tracks that you will mark off as you make progress. Many of the tracks are interconnected with other elements in the game, giving you bonuses along the way and opportunities to unlock more points. Advancing on all of these tracks offers various amounts of points, advancements, and bonuses.
The game lasts eight rounds. Each round, roll colored dice based on the number of players, then place them on spaces on the action chart based on value and color. Each player drafts one die and uses it. Once everyone has drafted a die twice, all players get to use the remaining die on the action chart.
Each die you draft lets you do three things, which you do in this order:
1. Collect the bonus of the space from which you removed the die. 2. Take the action associated with the space from which you removed the die (or, alternatively, UPGRADE, or RESEARCH). 3. Take the action of the space on your sheet where you placed the die, unless it's blocked off by the rolled Auditor die.
Then all players receive the action associated with the space of the remaining die.
After eight rounds, you score points for your progress in engineering, assembly, testing, and more. Whoever has the most points wins.
The five actions allow you to fill an available space in one department on your sheet:
The Speedometer action is the simplest. It's a single track with no bonuses, but it will reward you with an increasing number of points each round.
The Sales department is where you earn money. Various actions require you to spend money, and if you choose to focus on it, it can be a source of big points.
The Testing department lets you race your car around 3 tracks filled with bonuses. However, to start on a track you have to pay for a car.
The Engineering department lets your advance up 5 tracks filled with bonuses (of a different flavor than the testing tracks). To start on a track, you must collect an engineer bonus from one of the other departments. The end of each track includes a mega-bonus or end-game scoring opportunity, but its requirements must be unlocked before it's active.
The Production department has a single grid-like track that allows you to advance in several directions as needed. It has several hubs that give a lot of points, but have requirements that must be found in other departments.
UPGRADING an action allows you to spend money to permanently double or triple the amount of fills provided by it. This applies to all ways that action is gained: Whether through selected actions in steps 2 and 3, or any bonuses.
RESEARCHING allows you to advance on the Research track. Every third advancement gives you a free action or a one-time bonus of your choice.
Motor City has a solo mode in which you try to top your own score against an auditor that drafts dice and blocks areas of your sheet. Its difficulty can easily be adjusted by changing the colors of dice during setup, with no added rules.
Motor City is game 3 of the Motor City Gameworks Loaded Roll and Write series.
Game 1: Fleet: The Dice Game Game 2: Three Sisters Game 3: Motor City

Warpgate is a fast-paced game of hand management and area control. As a leader of a unique race of aliens, lead them towards triumph.
Move your fleets of star-ships on a hex-based modular game board, establish colonies and outposts and engage your enemies in battles for the control of prized commodities. Research new technologies and grow your galactic empire.

Hamlet is a medium weight competitive village builder where players are communally turning their Hamlet into a bustling little town. In this tile placing game, players construct buildings that everyone can use to create materials, refine resources, earn money and make important deliveries to construct the Hamlet’s big landmark - the Church.
The game features irregular shaped tiles that connect together without a grid to form a village that is completely different every time. The tile placement organically creates interconnecting paths that the villagers use to transport resources across the village. This leads players to construct boards where no two games will ever feel the same. Since the buildings are communal, this also creates a fluid economy, where players are always working hard to provide the village with the resources that are most needed.
The game is designed by David Chircop (Petrichor, The Pursuit of Happiness). It plays between 1 to 4 players, with a solo mode currently being developed. It will be published by award winning studio Mighty Boards (Excavation Earth, Posthuman Saga).

Monster Pit is *not* a dexterity game! It features tableau building, dice drafting, and hand management.
Monster Pit marks the start of a new dungeon crawl experience from Elzra, with this first installment being a fully co-operative, fantasy adventure game set in the world of Catacombs.
During the game, loyal Captains must rally their forces to defend the Citadel against the emerging threat of a creature from the deep. Think Gandalf rallying the forces of Minas Tirith in Return of the King.
This is not a tower defense game, but blends several mechanisms including dice drafting (there are custom dice and rolls can be mitigated), tableau building (the player boards are extra large to organize the various cards), and worker placement (in terms of the various buildings your Captain will visit).
Your Captain’s tableau will include soldiers, wizards, heroes, mounts, and wyverns. Some of these characters are for offensive purposes (attacking the Monster etc) and some for defensive purposes (building your resources including your dice pool). During the game player will also complete quests for the King, buy items from the Town Hall, ride a Mount, fight creatures in the streets of the Citadel, upgrade their Captain at the Armoury, visit the Dwarven Grotto for gold, and find helpful trinkets in the Fountain.
The game supports "true solo" (a solo player need only control one Captain), fully co-op multiplayer against the Monster, one vs one (one player controls the Captain, the other player controls the Monster), or one player (controlling the Monster) vs up to four Captains. All play modes feature long or short variants.
There are five monsters included in the game (Dragon, Enchantress, Behemoth, Vampire Queen, and Orc War Chief) both featuring "A" and "B" sides for greater challenge and variation.

Summon creatures, build attractions and entice visitors to your otherworld theme park.
In Cthulhu Island, Cultist travel the world to create the best and most grotesque theme park, filled with creatures and elder gods from other dimensions and realms beyond this world.
During your turn, you expand the map. Then you either explore, enlist or exterminate cultists, taking actions based on your available control in an area. Each area has an associated action, that will grant you favours based on the amount of cultist available and if you can pay the elemental cost.
Throughout the game, you will face many options on your travel; gaining power from magical sources, summoning creatures, building attractions, entice visitors or destroy your opponents. It's all for the greater good (or the greater gods)!
In the end, you win by publicity. Explore, enlist, entice and exterminate in Cthulhu Island!

The FOG is a competitive, challenging and enthralling game with 45 to 120 minutes playing time for 1 to 6 players. It is about villagers of a lonely island who are trying in panic to reach their boats on the shore to escape the rapidly approaching mysterious, horrifying and perilous FOG that has taken over their island.
You are playing a guardian coordinating the difficult path of several self-drafted islanders towards their boats – trying to save as many of them as possible. Each turn you use the available movement points for the various movement options like running, swapping, pushing, squeezing through, jumping and crossing, to move your selected islanders towards the rescuing boats. While the beach is packed and everyone is in panic, will you stay calm and assure that your islanders reach their boats before the FOG reaches them? For your achievements you will receive or loose rescuing points. The guardian with the most rescuing points wins the game against The FOG and the other players.
The game combines tactical depth, interactive dynamics and a high variability through the islanders many different movement options and a very variable setup.
The Story:
Zanay, the beautiful and only island in the Great Ocean and the home of many nations like the Wolxar, Abxaru, Tazul’u and Redyii has been threatened for weeks now by a mysterious giant dark wall of FOG. At first only far on the horizon to see, the FOG one day reached their home. Bit by bit it crawled over the island. What is in or behind The FOG is unknown. Nobody that ever went into The FOG – courageous warriors, wise elders and others – or who got “swallowed” by it, ever came back.
Except for one last village on the east coast by the Xappalo Bay the whole island has now been swallowed by The FOG. All nations have built hastily boats in this bay in the last weeks, to hopefully still escape the FOG. Their only hope is an ancient tale, which over generations and centuries has been passed on – their original home Yamagi, the magic land. Somewhere very far to the east it is supposed to lie.
They thought they had at least another two or three days in which they could embark organized. But suddenly The FOG gets faster and faster and everyone – leaders, elders, sailors, warriors and commoners – just start running in pure panic and regardless of others, to hopefully reach the boats somehow before the FOG reaches them.
Can you help Roxira, Dayark, Tumroq, Loxior and all the others? Hopefully as many of them as possible can be saved. It all depends on you …

It is said that Wiraqocha created the sun and the pre-Columbian tribes of the Andes. Under his leadership, those who will train the mighty Inca people came out of their caves to discover new horizons in order to subsist and grow in harmony with nature. They venerated Pachamama, Mother Earth, the basis of all living things, plants and minerals, on earth and under the earth.
In Tiwanaku, first announced as Pachamama, you lead your tribe into unknown territory in search of new lands to cultivate. Your goal: To explore regions and draw outlines to develop cultures according to the customs and legacies of Pachamama. If you honor Her by respecting the great principles of diversity and complementarity, Nature will reward you; otherwise, you will suffer his wrath. In this race, risk-taking, deduction, intuition, and a good sense of timing should allow you to get through.
To set up Tiwanaku, first choose a scenario disc based only on your desired length of a game, with a 5x5 grid being the smallest option and a 5x9 grid the largest. Place the terrain tiles (which come in four types) shown on the back of this disc on the indicated spaces of the game board, then cover them with the indicated crop tokens (which come in five types). Place the scenario disc into the Pachamama wheel — after ensuring that the windows on the wheel are closed — then turn the wheel face up. Each player takes 3-5 pawns depending on player count, and places a diversity stone of their color at the bottom of each terrain chart.
Each scenario disc indicates a unique arrangement of terrain tiles and crop tiles. Terrain tiles are in regions of 1-5 spaces, and a region of one color does not touch a region of the same color, even diagonally. Crop tokens have a value of 1-5, and each value has a different size/color (level 1 is brown, level 2 is green, etc.). A size 1 region will contain a value 1 crop token, a size 2 region will contain crop tokens of value 1 and 2, and only a size 5 region will contain crop tokens of each value. Two identical crop values can never be adjacent, even diagonally.
On a turn, take either an explore action or a divine action:
• To explore, move a pawn already on the game board or add a pawn to the game board. When you add a pawn, place it on a perimeter space. You can move this pawn or a pawn already on the board in an orthogonal direction. If you hit a space that contains an offering token, you may continue moving either straight or at a 90º angle; if you hit a pawn of the same color, you must continue moving either straight or at a 90º angle; if you hit a space that's empty or contains a terrain tile, you must stop. You cannot pass through a space that contains an opponent's pawn. (Instead of moving, you can remove one of your pawns from the game board, which ends your turn.)
If you stop on an empty space, you discover the terrain there. On the Pachamama wheel, align the coordinates of the space on the game board with the dials, then open the discovery window to see which color of terrain to add to this space. Then advance your diversity stone for this terrain type one space and score 1 point for each of your diversity stones at this same level.
• To divine, choose a pawn of yours on the game board on a terrain tile without a crop token, then name what value of crop you think belongs in that space based on the territory and crops already present nearby. Open the divine window for this space on the Pachamama wheel. If you're wrong, place the correct crop tile on this space, then lose points equal to the value of this crop. If you're correct, place the correct crop tile on this space, gain points equal to the value of this crop, gain an offering cube of this crop color (if you don't already have one), then if you wish, you can divine with another pawn of yours on a terrain tile.
At the end of an explore or divine action, you can hand in 1-5 offering cubes for 0-10 points. You can hold at most one offering of each color.
When the final terrain tile is placed on the game board, the end of the game is triggered. Starting with this player, each player in turn can take a single divine action or pass. If you pass, you take no further actions. If you divine, you gain points and an offering cube like normal, or you lose points and must pass. Keep taking turns around the table until everyone has passed, then make a final offering, then see who has the most points.
Comentarios