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Crowdfunding Round-up: The Heart and Solo of the Party

Crowdfunding Round-up: The Heart and Solo of the Party
Board Game: The Walking Dead: No Sanctuary
• As board games amble out of the back alley and into the social conscious, shrewd merchandising mavens have turned a hungry eye, and geek-magnet IPs are cropping up in cardboard form. Cryptozoic Entertainment was on the forefront of that movement, and fans of a certain AMC drama may finally have their grail in The Walking Dead: No Sanctuary from sibling designers Brady and Adam Sadler, both former in-house design talent for Fantasy Flight Games. A slick product rollout includes planned expansions to the 1-4 player base game, with fan-favorite playable characters spread across those releases. (KS link)

• Today’s film makers, comic writers, and game designers continue to raid the ’80s pop culture cupboards for inspiration. 1987’s Evil Dead II is getting a film reboot, Space Goat Productions has been publishing Evil Dead 2 comics, and now they’re completing the trifecta with Evil Dead 2: The Official Board Game by rookie designer Taylor Smith. Memorabilia hounds will be interested to know that the custom wooden dice included in higher pledge tiers are made from the wood used in the iconic cabin of the film. I can’t imagine they afford too many friendly rolls… (KS link)

Board Game: Near and Far
• According to Julie Andrews and the Von Trapp family singers, far is a long long way to run, but Ryan Laukat of Red Raven Games is accustomed to going the distance with his KS projects, and the campaign for Near and Far is his most popular yet. Its success is no doubt precipitated by the strong critical reception of Laukat’s Above and Below, to which it serves as a sequel of sorts. What caught my eye is the spiral-bound atlas that, when folded open, provides a set of 11 different game maps. Variety without modularity! Whoa. (KS link)

• One of the hallmarks of a well-produced euro game is custom wood shapes instead of simple cubes to represent the game’s resources. Sotirios Tsantilos, Pantelis Bouboulis, and the rest of the LudiCreations team know that well, and are offering a “deluxe” version of Crisis, which has proven 20 times as popular as the cheaper, cubes-only version. Despite success in video games and RPGs, dieselpunk isn’t done all that often in cardboard; in fact, it has no category here on the ’Geek. Perhaps this release will grease the zerks for others to follow. (KS link)

Board Game: Hostage Negotiator: Crime Wave
• Though it didn’t win the Golden Geek for best solitaire game last year, A.J. Porfirio’s Hostage Negotiator, published by Van Ryder Games, has a dedicated player base (especially among the 1 Player Guild, who gave it GOTY honors) and is currently ranked among the top 10 solitaires in the database. The game has already seen expansions, but Crime Wave is both expansion and standalone. The box dwarfs the original’s — necessitated by all the new content. Now just fork over the ransom money and no one gets hurt. (KS link)

• Given the ubiquity of classic solitaire — also known as Klondike — among modern audiences, I’m surprised that its core conceit has been so seldom used as the foundation stone for modern hobby designs. The folks at 8th Summit are crossing their fingers that it could work as an entire system of solitaire decks with overlaid themes. The first concept from Robert Kouba and Jason Maxwell is Superhero Solitaire. The two red suits relate to the player’s hero character, the two black suits to the villain AI character. If it’s a retail success, more themed sets will follow. (KS link)

Board Game: Coldwater Crown
• There’s been some impetus to introduce “mid-Atlantic” as a term for the melding of European and American game design sensibilities. Brian Suhre’s Coldwater Crown is full euro in its design, but at least the theme lets you go fishing in the mid-Atlantic! (Sorry for the bait-and-switch.) This marks Bellwether Games’ first deep sea charter, after getting their feet wet with a handful of smaller productions. The worker placement genre is fairly muddy waters these days, but this game’s unique hook is triggering actions on both placement and removal of pawns. (KS link)

• The most indie title on this list comes to us by way of new publisher Druid City Games and designer James Hudson, whose debut title Barnyard Roundup is interesting in that it puts bluffing in a title aimed at mixed-age audiences. It’s basic set-collection, but you have to out-Vezzini your opponents to get the cards you want and avoid the cards you don’t want. The Mr. Cuddington team lent their talents to the game’s appearance; the airy illustrations belie the experience of getting back-stabbed by your friend’s fistful of crows. Who knew the barnyard could be so vicious? Orwell, maybe. (KS link)

• A lot of game publishers have tapped the 16-bit well for its magic geek fuel, but Magic Meeple Games, founded by video game and board game enthusiasts, is crafting a product line aimed squarely at the intersection of those two interests. The line, dubbed the “Super Nano Enhanced Series” (boil it down to an acronym to get the reference), will be portable-friendly games bristling with classic video game graphics and homages. The first release is Fire of Eidolon from designer Michael Lipton, a co-operative game of exploring a dungeon with a group of adventurers. (KS link)

• Lovecraft may have been a nihilist, but nothing says you can’t contemplate your existential helplessness while you plot the downfall of humanity, right? Greater Than Games is making use of their new-ish Fabled Nexus imprint to summon forth Fate of the Elder Gods, an arcane creation from Richard Launius, Darrell Louder, and Chris Kirkman. Eschewing the cooperative elements so native to mythos games, FotEG (which I like to pronounce phonetically, like the name of some gibbous elder being: foe-tegg) invokes in-your-face PvP elements and also sports a solo mode. (KS link)

Board Game: Fate of the Elder Gods


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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