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Let's press forward! Time to dump the inbox filled with hopeful messages from designers and publishers who wanted to tell me about something that might or might not have succeeded — messages that I shooed aside in the run-up to Gen Con 50 and the subsequent frantic buzzing of SPIEL '17 that's been expanding to fill every centimeter between my ears. Sorry, folks! You missed out on hearing about the "Lycans vs Vampires" fantasy backgammon collection, but perhaps you'll have another chance to back this game of the future in the future.
At least you can still back Fog Monster, a miniature fog machine that makes "continuous real fog that creeps and crawls across your game terrain". Every playing of Kingdomino can benefit from that!
• In any case, let's kick this off with Tim Fowers' Now Boarding, which features the damn coolest logo I've seen in recent days. Beyond that, the graphic design of the box itself is a winner, copping a movie poster look that's selling an aesthetic and not merely a game. I've seen more than my share of game covers over the years, and at this point I'm most excited by game covers that don't look like game covers. Graphic designers should take a wider variety of approaches to their work. After all, we know that something is a book because it has pages that you can flip through; you don't need every book to adopt the same style of graphic design so that you know at a glance that it's a book. Game publishers should take a similar approach. (KS link)
As for the game itself, here's an overview:
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Now Boarding is a real-time cooperative game in which you work together to fly a fleet of airplanes. You must to deliver all the passengers to their destinations before they get too angry — and new passengers are constantly arriving! Upgrade your plane to fly faster and carry more passengers to handle the load. The twist: All players take all their turns at the same time! This allows for clever hand-offs of passengers. It's a whole new level of pick-up-and-deliver game.
• And even should you not care about Now Boarding, you might want to check out that project since Fowers is also funding a third edition of Wok Star, another real-time cooperative game that he first released on his own in 2010 and is now bringing back to print through his Fowers Games brand./pic2716343.jpg)
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• And why might humanity disappear? You might find that subject discussed in Steve Jackson's Conspiracy Theory from his own Steve Jackson Games. This game mimics the black card/white card format of Cards Against Humanity and its endless sludgepump of copycats, but with a PG-friendly approach so that kids can also suggest reasons that Bigfoot has never been captured. (Answer: Ninja training.) (KS link)
• Our obligatory miniatures game in this round-up is Champions of Hara from Walter Barber, Ian VanNest, Andrew Zimmermann, and Greenbrier Games, with this game having both competitive (arena-style combat) and cooperative modes of play, with the latter challenging you to defeat monsters to contain destructive energy so that the world doesn't die. (KS link)
• Another competitive/cooperative creation on Kickstarter is Ragnar Brothers' Darien Apocalypse, with this being the second "Quantum" game from Dicken, Kendall, and Kendall, a Quantum game being one in which you're meant to relive multiple versions of actual history events, affecting them along the way with your actions. The history in this case is the Kingdom of Scotland's ill-conceived efforts to found a colony on the Isthmus of Panama. (KS link)
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As for the game, SteamRollers is a dice-based, network-building, pick-up-and-deliver game that originated from Gerritts' attempt to make something that would resemble a dice version of Age of Steam. (KS link)
• Babis Giannios' Alexandria from LudiCreations has a great premise: The Great Library in Alexandria has been set ablaze, and you must try to save as many works as possible. (KS link) BGG shot an overview video of the game at SPIEL '16, at which time it looked far different than it does today:
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• Grail Games has released several titles new and old from Reiner Knizia, most notably a fabulous looking version of Medici, and currently the publisher is funding a new version of Knizia's excellent rail-and-stock game Stephenson's Rocket, a game that will likely be new to 95% of the people reading this post. It's amazing sometimes to think of how many people have entered the hobby since this game first debuted in 1999. Heck, I didn't enter it with gusto until 2003! What's old is new again... (KS link)
• I've written to designer Naomi Clark several times to ask whether Consentacle, a two-player game "that represents consensual sexual encounter between a curious human and a tentacled alien", will ever be available again and have yet to receive a response. Imagine my surprise when I discover that Consentacle is on Kickstarter now, and if you pledge high enough, you can receive two tentacles from the game's debut exhibition in 2014. Few games offer such treats. (KS link)
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Editor's note: Please don't post links to other Kickstarter projects in the comments section. Write to me via the email address in the header, and I'll consider them for inclusion in a future crowdfunding round-up. Thanks! —WEM
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