Crowdfunding Round-up: The Downfall of the Sleepy Rooted Cowboys

• Cole Wehrle's John Company from Sierra Madre Games made a splash at SPIEL '17, and he has a very different looking game making a splash on Kickstarter as well, with cute animal artwork disguising an involved game that pits up players against one another in control for the woodland in Root.

As with 2016's Vast: The Crystal Caverns, this design from Leder Games gives each player control of a unique faction in an asymmetric design that also allows each player to win in a unique way. Leder Games has now done this twice, so clearly I need to mention this design element in order for it to be a thing that will hang around their neck forever. (KS link)

• Another faction-based game, but along far simpler lines, is Fightlings: The Card Game from Thoughtfish. This game is a different take on Ye Olde Memory as players create 17-card decks from two factions, add a wild card, shuffle, lay the cards in a 5x7 grid, then try to find pairs to beat up on the other player. (KS link)

• Steve Jackson Games has been dipping into Kickstarter somewhat regularly these days, with its latest project being a ten-day affair to get the word out about Andrew Hackard's Munchkin Starfinder, which takes seven classes and six races from Paizo Publishing's Starfinder Roleplaying Game and sets them in the familiar Munchkin milieu of doors being kicked and treasures grabbed. (KS link)

• The tag line for Chris Solis' Temporal Odyssey from Level 99 Games is "Draft the future!", which is a funny thing to say given that of course you're drafting for the future since you can't very well play a card at the same instant you're drafting it — but the saying works two ways here as Temporal Odyssey is a drafting game in which you battle the other players, rewinding time should you lose in order to take a different path and see whether it works out better for you. (KS link)

• The world has ended — again. While you might mourn the loss of most of Earth's population, your more immediate concern is making the best of what you have in hand to survive. More specifically,
John D. Clair's Downfall from Tasty Minstrel Games is a card-drafting game — yes, more drafting! — in which all players simultaneously play a card from their hand to lock in their action, then they carry these out, then they pass the cards and a new card to their hand before drafting again. (KS link)

• Jagged Alliance: The Board Game from Marko Jelen, Jan Wagner, and Underground Games GbR is a 1-4 player tabletop adaptation of Jagged Alliance the video game franchise in which you hire mercenaries and shoot lots of stuff. At least that's my initial high-level take on the game... (KS link)

• Gangs of Brittania from Daniel Feeny, Joel Livermore, and Chris Winterhoff puts 3-5 players in the role of gang boss, with them having "prisoner's dilemma"-style face-offs during the game to determine who gets what during a deal. (KS link)

• Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" seems like a creative work that exists now only to fuel creations from others. I could be wrong, of course, and legions of "Legend" fans might read and reread the short story each year, but I doubt it. In any case, the design team of Matt Riddle and Ben Pinchback has created Legends of Sleepy Hollow, a cooperative, scenario-based design from Dice Hate Me Games for 1-4 players in which they will enter Sleepy Hollow to uncover secrets, while trying to avoid fear as that keeps you from completing other actions. (KS link)

• Designers Craig and Jeff Van Ness of Soaring Rhino are having better luck in their second attempt to fund Shifting Realms, in which 2-4 players battle and build in three of five realms until the game-ending conditions in two realms are met, but having a goal one-third as much as your previous goal is one way to make that happen. (KS link)

• Worthington Publishing is bringing back its 2007 release Cowboys: The Way of the Gun in a new edition titled Cowboys Rebranded that includes 35(!) scenarios for 1-10 cowboy players. (KS link)

• Another game returning from the past is Zhu Rong's Kanzume Goddess, which Japanime Games released in 2012. In that earlier game, you were a mythological god, and you used your unique powers and a deck that you built to blast the energy from other gods to leave only you standing. Kanzume Goddess has been revised as Kamigami Battles: Battle of the Nine Realms, while Kamigami Battles: River of Souls is a standalone game that plays the same way, but with new gods and cards. (KS link)

• Designer Diane Sauer of Shoot Again Games showed off Bigfoot vs. Yeti during our 2017 Origins Game Fair coverage (see below), and now the game is looking for funding. Should you desire to be a cryptozoologist who is hunting for legendary creatures like those in the title, check out the video below for an overview of the gameplay. (KS link)

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