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• Post-apocalyptic board games are all the rage, and the latest in that genre (for the next few hours at least) is Antler Games' Saltlands from designers András Drozdy, Gombos Gergely, and Gergely Kruppa. In the game, players use land sails with wheels to skim across the salt flats, trying to outrun — or kill — the Horde chasing them on gas-guzzling machines. (KS link)
(As a side note on the connectivity that can result from a Kickstarter campaign, Drozdy sent me the following note: "I was amazed when just two hours after launch, the first translator contacted us, then even more. It's great to see that these enthusiastic people offered their help to make Saltlands available in their mother tongue." Thus, in addition to having English rules in the box and German and Hungarian rules available for download, rules will also be available in Italian, French, Finnish, Japanese, Spanish and Portuguese.)
• Bloodstone Frontier sounds like an equally dire place to visit, but the setting is "pioneer-punk" rather than post-apocalyptic, with players of this tabletop skirmish design from Julian Glover and Soulspryte Studios fighting over the stashes that they need to survive. (KS link)
• As every artist (writer, musician, etc.) knows, creating art isn't enough; you need to sell it as well, or else you won't have the funds to keep doing what you want to do. (Alternatively, find a sponsor, but that's a different game.) Mike Wokasch's Starving Artists from Fairway 3 Games challenges you to get the paint cubes you need to finish classic works of art, but if you bring that art to the market at the wrong time, you might find the supplies gone before you can refill your palette. (KS link)
• Speaking of writers, Mayday Games' Twist of Fate from Keith Rentz transforms Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist into a micro card game, with players using double-sided cards to attack opponents' luck or shillings while boosting their own in the search for long-term sanctuary. (KS link)
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• Less straightforward fantasy is present in Legends of the Mist from Chris Peach and Kid Loves Tiger Games, which is not about the most awesome shower in all of creation, but an otherworldly mist that transports clans to a new land, after which they proceed to beat one another up via plot tiles and dice rolls to complete objectives for the Emperor (or Empress — the description swaps genders at one point). (KS link)
• Another far-out world comes from John Clowdus of Small Box Games with a pair of games — GearSeed and SYNOD — set in a world in which "seasons shift sporadically and the strange folk that call this world home do their best to adapt to its ever changing landscape". If anyone exhibits the doujin spirit of Tokyo Game Market, it's Clowdus, who keeps turning out small card games one after another. (KS link)
• Perhaps I'm underestimating the appeal of gnarly goat gums among gamers, but the cover of Clash of the Battle Goats isn't one I'd be highlighting on my shelves. This "tactical card game of brutal goat combat" can be integrated with Gruff, a 2015 release also from Brent Critchfield and Studio Woe, to create exactly the right combination of mutated monster goats. (KS link)
• "Avoid the void" seems like sensible advice no matter what that void might be: a crevice in the roadway, a sinkhole in Florida, or the gaping maw of a battle goat. Avoid the Void from Tim Mierzejewski and Geek Fever Games offers a more traditional take on a void, with 3-7 players trying to avoid being sucked into black holes longer than anyone else. (KS link)
• Another space-based trope is present in Into the Black: A Game of Space Piracy from James J. Campbell and the improbably named I Will Never Grow Up Gaming, with the player pirates working together to reach the bridge of a federal starship before getting busted by those selfsame feds. (Publisher's website)
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• And the co-ops continue in Bloc by Bloc: The Insurrection Game from Rocket Lee, Tim Simons, and Out of Order Games, with each player controlling a faction of revolutionaries who are trying to take down the authorities and occupy state districts before the military arrives and time runs out. To win, though, each faction needs to not only oust the state, but complete its secret agenda as well. (KS link)
• You have another chance to topple the state in Coup. This Rikki Tahta design was first self-published in 2012, then picked up Indie Boards & Cards and brought to a far wider audience, with versions having been released in Germany, Russia, Spain, and many other countries, including Brazil in a stylish version with art by Weberson Santiago. Now IBC has licensed the art from that Brazilian version for the release of Coup Deluxe Edition: Brazil Art, which will include the Coup base game and some of the elements from Coup: Reformation. Yet another composite item to further entangle our database listings... (KS link)
• If overturning the government isn't your thing, you can try to run it instead in Jim McCollum's Ameritocracy, a 2-3 player design with dual-use cards that can be played either one way as teams or actions or the other way as staff members who join teams (to activate those abilities) or claim headlines. (KS link)
• If nothing else catches your eye in this post, I hope you'll at least be inspired by what was also the inspiration for Xavier Faure's Guédelon: Le Jeu from ASYNCRON games. Since 1997, Michel Guyot — who is owner of Saint-Fargeau Castle in Saint-Fargeau, France — has been leading a construction project in nearby Treigny to build a castle using only techniques and materials available during the Middle Ages. The project has an estimated completion date of 2020 and attracts more than 300,000 visitors annually.
Guédelon: Le Jeu is an attempt to gamify this long-term building project, with 2-4 players working cooperatively (yes, another one!) to build a castle before unforeseen events and an ever-increasing number of visitors hamstring your efforts to complete the project in time. (KS link)
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Guédelon in progress in August 2015; image from Wikipedia
Oversized prototype
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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