Crowdfunding Round-up: Gemblo in the U.S., Democracy as a Game & Modern Witch Hunts in Salem

Gemblo is an abstract strategy game with translucent, colored pieces, each of which is made up of one to five hexagons. Each player has an identical set of pieces in a unique color. The goal is to get rid of all of your pieces by placing them on the hexagonal game board. Each piece that you place after the first cannot touch previously-placed pieces of the same color; instead each piece must be a distance of "1" from another piece of the same color, where 1 is the length of a side of one of the small hexagons. Another restriction is that the distance being measured can't directly cross another player's piece, but it can lie at the junction of two pieces. Once all players have placed as many pieces as they can, they count the number of hexagonal units in the pieces they couldn't place, and the player with the lowest score wins.

Gemblo supports up to six players. In the two-player version of the game, each player uses two colors of pieces.

The year is 1692. In an atmosphere of pessimism and charged paranoia, the citizens of Salem are at the mercy of demons – not demons of the soul, but demons of the mind. What began as a devout Puritan community devolved in a matter of months into a people torn apart by fear, lies, and fanatical orthodoxy. The residents of Salem quickly discovered that they could find Hell all around them.

Salem incites the atmosphere of paranoia that held the village of Salem captive. Players act with the assumption that there are witches among them (and, in this case, there will be). Each player controls six residents of Salem, three of whom are witches. Game play is simple: try to rid the village of witches and keep the identities of your own residents secret.

The game plays over the course of four rounds representing the four months (June–September 1692) in which the hysteria was at its height. Each round has two parts: a Witch Hunt and a Witch Trial, followed by hangings (the dates of which correspond to the four actual hangings that took place in Salem that year). During the Witch Hunt, players send residents to jail and provide alibis for their own jailed citizens. At the end of each round all jailed citizens stand trial. Players then collectively decide who is hanged and who is spared. The player who is most successful at discerning witches from villagers wins!

While the story surrounding the Salem witch trials has become something of a legend, every character in this game is based on a real person whose life was directly touched and in some cases torn apart or taken away by the events surrounding the Salem witch trials. Extensive research has been done to craft the real-life stories of all 42 residents in the game.

While this game focuses on the people and events specific to Salem, Massachusetts, similar witch hunts were taking place as far north as Maine and as far West as Connecticut. Surely, the devil had come to New England.

Democracy: Majority Rules is a game of debate, diplomacy and deal-making, a game in which designer Mark Rein•Hagen has taken his love and study of politics to create a game of power struggles, back door deals, and unscrupulous actions.

You play an activist, a power broker, or the leader of a political party – in any case, someone who organizes campaigns, games the system and wins elections. Your job is to make compromises, yet always stand by your principles, form coalitions yet still achieve your agenda. To succeed you must herd cats, spin facts into a web of deception, and speak power to truth.

Enter a world of mudslinging, dirty tricks and the crooks and liars who manipulate the masses, juke the system and corrupt the true believers in order to throw out the tyrants, make the world a better place, and save us all from ourselves. A canny and calculating political operative, you are battling to take over a country in crisis. The old-line political parties are weak and divided, primed for being taken over from within or pushed out of the way. Your movement has captured the imagination of a small but loyal few and now it's your job to grow it into a national force. The goal is to put your handpicked candidate into high office, lead the country, and put your mark on history.

Democracy: Majority Rules is focused on the retail work of politics at every scale: making friends, forging alliances, outmaneuvering rivals, deceiving enemies, building consensus, selling your point of view, creating a coalition, hiding resentment, feigning weakness, blindsiding foes, and turning doubters into believers. It's all in the game.

Welcome to world of Storm the Castle!, a 1-4 player semi-cooperative game in which you take the exciting role of one of the four marauding Dark Forces armies in a race to breach Castle StormHaven's walls, overrun the defenders, and claim victory by reaching the castle's keep first.

Castle StormHaven is guarded vigilantly by brave defenders comprised of an alliance between Men, Elves, Halflings, and Dwarves. For over 300 years, these defenders have repelled numerous invasions from the Badlands, home to the subterranean Dark Elf marauders and the mysterious sect of arcane bending wizards, the Arcanists. StormHaven is the first and last line of defense from keeping the fertile farmlands and gold mines of Western Holmenstein from being overrun.

Years ago, a mysterious masked and exceptionally short villain appeared with the goal of uniting the Badlands and ruling over Holmenstein. Dubbed "the Boss" by his cohorts, he promised gold and power to those who would follow him. First the Dark Elves, then the Arcanists joined his Dark Forces. Soon after, the Orc pirate raiders joined the growing army and brought with them their crazed goblin allies and monstrous cousins, the giants. Knowing The Boss' army needed further strength to overwhelm Castle StormHaven's defenses, he revealed the last piece of strategy for domination, the Undead Horde of the BlackSoot Swamps.

Now the four dark force armies – Dark Elves, Arcanists, Orc and Goblins of the Green Tide, and the innumerable Undead host – begin their long march east. Breaching Castle StormHaven's thick walls is no easy feat. It takes a desire for loot, hordes of your minions willing to be led to certain death (err, victory), cunning strategy, and a touch of treachery. The first player whose Dark Force unit enters the keep first, by the end of turn eight, is truly the mightiest champion and claims total victory for his army.