What's so special? The retail version of IBC's Coup: Reformation will come packaged on a blister card, with buyers being able to fit the cards in the Coup box, but the KS edition has a shiny gold box, along with extra gold foil coins and bonus cards with additional art for more variety. Shiny! (KS link)
• Scott Almes and Sprocket Games are telling a ludic tale Of Mice and Lemmings, and with no Lennie in sight, the rodents have at least some chance of surviving until the end of the game. In this game for 5-8 players, each person is secretly part of the mouse or lemming team, and they either want (or don't want) to cross a river in order to reach the cheese on the other side. Each round, players play one bridge card (valued 0-10) to the table and if the sum of the cards played is high enough, then the bridge holds and one player makes it to the other side. Which player? Well, during the round exactly one player must reveal her identity instead of playing a card, and if she's a mouse and the bridge is finished, she scores; if she's a lemming and the bridge isn't finished, she scores! After each player has been revealed, the team with the most points scores a bonus point, then players regroup and play again for a predetermined number of sessions. (KS link)
• Finnish publisher Roll D6 Games wants to find 2-3 players for a Troll Hunt, with players trying to place mirrors — or at least cardboard replicas of same — on the game board to reflect light in the eyes of trolls and turn them to stone. (KS link)
• Gameplay in Alex Dijk and Paul Nicholas' Highway Hustle from Blue Room seems like straight-up tile-laying at first glance, but players are in a 1970s throwback with each representing a tiny town — Funkyville! Bellbottom Beach! — that wants to have its favorite music honored in the big city, but to do that it needs to pave roads so that folks can get there. (KS link)
• In the "If only I spoke Korean" category, I present a crowdfunding campaign from Piece Craft that's for two games: Chasing Alice, a two-player design with the Queen of Hearts trying to find Alice (and Alice obviously trying not to be found), and Kill Zone, a 3-5 player game inspired by the movie The Hurt Locker in which players are on a bomb squad. The campaign is already funded, and the backing levels provide DIY kits for backers, so perhaps published versions will follow in the future, along with non-Korean descriptions. (Tumblbug link)
• Tracker: A Post Nuclear Disaster from self-publishing designers Tim and Žiga Berce has you trying to complete missions, grab artefacts, and loot (or kill) opponents in order to collect points or be the last one alive in this post-apocalyptic board game. (KS link)
• Designer Jason Tagmire is publishing another set of storyteller cards, a fantasy-themed set this time, with each card having multiple narrative and gaming elements to inspire your stories in a more fanciful direction than a skim through Roget's. (KS link)
• In Foretold: Rise of a God from designer Jay Semerad and Apotheosis Games LLC, you are one of the 2-4 beings attempting to rise to the status of new god. (No, not those New Gods — a new new god.) The game combines deck-building, tile-laying and dice-rolling, with players trying to attract followers, build a temple, and buy relics while on their way to godhood. (KS link)
• Ben Harkins from Floodgate Games is trying to put together an Epic Resort. This is not some idyllic vacationland, though, but rather "a strategic game of worker placement, deck-evolution and slaughtering tourists". I'm unclear as to whether you're slaughtering tourists or whether the game is about tourists who happen to be of a slaughtering nature, but perhaps this is already enough info for you to judge whether to investigate further. (KS link)
• Corné van Moorsel from Cwali has gone live with his funding project for Typo 2D, his remake of the decade-old Typo, with players trying to use letter cards to create sequences of letters that you'd find at the beginning of a word. You don't need to spell the word itself, but just know that your letter cluster would indeed kick off a word. (Spieleschmiede link)
• Fall Schematic from designers Matt Anderson and David Hanold and publisher [company=26924]Drawn by Clouds[/company] (in partnership with Wyrd Miniatures) is both a co-operative tabletop card game and a digital RPG for iOS or Android, with a way to combine both elements. It also has this intriguing come-on to encourage support: "For each $1 pledged, all backers receive 9 drops of sunlight (a $1.125 value) as part of their rewards." Not seven, not eight, but nine drops of sunlight! Only a single drop of sunlight enabled Rapunzel's hair to do many magical things, so imagine what might be possible from nine drops. Woo! (KS link) A short description of the game's setting:
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