![Crowdfunding Round-up: Roam Fields of Green for Herbs, Nectar, Cake, and Malia, the Lady of Disease](https://cf.geekdo-images.com/aZ9LL-Q8Z5qr61MpxOeTrg__medium/img/K2LVRRQzDGaWxRdBfkaOUUZSdoA=/fit-in/500x500/filters:no_upscale():strip_icc()/pic3114348.jpg)
I guess that I should keep looking at these projects then, so let's start with Pencil First Games' Herbaceous, a set-collection card game from Eduardo Baraf and Steve Finn, with solitaire rules from Keith Matejka. By chance my family and I visited the North Carolina Botanical Garden at UNC at Chapel Hill this weekend, and we spent a fair amount of time checking out the herbs on display. The delectable art by Beth Sobel captures these herbs beautifully in print; all that's missing are the bottle trees that demonstrate the various ways in which leaves meet on a stem. Perhaps as a stretch goal... (KS link)
• Another game from the garden is Malte Kühle's Carrotia from MAGE Company, with the players hopping through a maze to collect carrots while avoiding predators. (KS link)
• If we're talking herbs and carrots, let's expand our vision to Artipia Games' Fields of Green, which transports the action of Vangelis Bagiartakis' Among the Stars to late 20th century farming, with players competing to prepare their lands for harvest season when they try to cultivate green stuff in their wallet. (KS link)
• Even tinier fields of green await in Scott Almes' Island Hopper from Eagle-Gryphon Games, with players either taking bribes in the Captain role that flies the plane or giving bribes to influence where the plane goes in the hope of making deliveries to a dozen islands. (KS link)
• If that's not too many islands to consider, you can find many more in Tiki Island from Matt Hyzer, Christian Miedel, and Great Wight Games. The main island's volcano is exploding (of course), and you need to skedaddle to safety by hopping from one island to another across the ocean. You just need to find those islands first... (KS link)
• Natural disasters of another sort are at play in Sharknado: The Board Game!, a cooperative scenario-based game Eric Cesare, Anthony Rando, and Devious Devices in which players must face the (unnaturally) combined forces of sharks and tornadoes. The Kickstarter is only half funded as it nears completion, but if we've learned anything about sharknadoes over the past few years, we know that they always return — sometimes more than once. (KS link)
• If you thought that "Sharknado" was a creature in Sandy Petersen's Glorantha: The Gods War from his own Petersen Games, you wouldn't be far from the truth given that the game already includes Orlanth the Storm King, Ragnaglar the Mad God, Kyger Litor the Hellmother, and Malia, the Lady of Disease among other beasties. As for the gameplay, you're summoning minions, heroes, and gods; constructing shrines, temples, and ziggurats; and clashing in mortal combat — you know, the usual world domination type of stuff. (KS link)
• By contrast, Jeff Beck's Word Domination has you use the power of letters and spelling to construct artifacts, claim areas, and not clash in any type of combat whatsoever. (KS link)
• "Nectar" is a normal word that you might spell in Word Domination, but the word's been upsized for Xīn Mào's NECTAR due to the importance of that substance in the world as a resurrection potion. Maybe you're simply screaming "NECTAR!" so loudly at the person that they arise from the dead? Anyway, in the game you attempt to put together various sets of ingredients so that you can yell a lot on your way to victory. (KS link)
• If you need to nosh on something more substantial than nectar, Li, Liu, Mao and Sizigi Studios want you to consider cake, specifically Cake Duel, a two-player bluffing-based card game in which you use sheep to steal cakes from one another. Two advanced sheep are shuffled among the other cards each game to provide for surprise plays and help you practice shuffling sheep, should you ever need to call upon this skill in the future. (KS link)