![Crowdfunding Round-up: Treasures from Taiwan, and Pages from Pierô](https://cf.geekdo-images.com/FBUCNEFjP_72ECZ_MEwGjA__medium/img/cMnQ8vWB1ZVccS265CVq5REVGXM=/fit-in/500x500/filters:no_upscale():strip_icc()/pic3091585.jpg)
If nothing else, you now know about one more of the hundreds of new titles that will be available at Spiel 2016 — assuming that the game funds, that is. (KS link)
• If time has run out on the project above, perhaps you'd instead prefer another game from the same part of the world, such as Taiwan Monsters, which is on Chinese-language funding site Zeczec.com and which is a complete mystery to me, although it looks purty and is already funded. (Zeczec link)
• No? Then how about Bubble Tea from Li-He Studio's Aza Chen, designer of Cat Tower, Doggy GO!, and other adorable games. In this real-time game, each player has nine bubble tea ingredient cards, someone rolls the ingredient dice from the bubble tea container, then everyone races to put the right ingredients in the right cup card. (Zeczec link)
• How about yet another Taiwanese project, this one being the more-accessible-outside-of-Taiwan Guns & Steel: Renaissance, a standalone expansion to Jesse Li's Guns & Steel from Grail Games and Moaideas Game Design. This game plays like the original, with players laying cards face down as resources or face up to use their developmental power, with the long-term goal of acquiring wonders, taking all of the space age cards, or stockpiling VPs. (KS link)
• Joost Das' Hylaria from FableSmith is a party game in which players divide into teams, then each receive two image tiles face down in front of them while three tiles are placed face up on the table to start a storyline. On a turn, you try to communicate what's on your tiles to your teammates — perhaps through a code you've created earlier — then you take a tile from in front of any other player and add it to the storyline. If the storyline now has three identical tiles in it, your team scores every tile up to the one just played. Collect enough tiles, and your team wins! (KS link)
• Designer Mitsuo Yamamoto and publisher Logy Games were on Kickstarter in 2015 with the stacking game Moon-Sun-Angel, and now they're back with a different stacking challenge under the name ACTOP: Ancient Construct Tower of Philosopher. In this 2-6 player game, players take turns adding a polycube and a balance stone on a 3x3 space (that must be kept clear in the center to create a chimney-like structure), with players scoring points based on the size of the piece they place and using the balance stone to mess with the next to place. When the polycubes have all been placed or someone knocks over the tower, the game ends. (KS link)
• The letters in the game title ABXY will likely trigger thoughts of video games past, and that's the intent of this design from Jack Rosetree and Broken Games, which pits two players against one another in creature combat with two of the A, B, X, and Y actions being secretly chosen by each player each round. (KS link)
• Designer Chris James of Stratus Games has used Kickstarter to fund the first four years of Casual Game Insider, a mainstream-friendly quarterly magazine about tabletop games sold in game stores and newsstands, and he's back to fund year five, with the focus once again being casual games that can be taught in ten minutes and played in under an hour. (KS link)
• Bad People carries the tagline "The Party Game You Probably Shouldn't Play", yet here designer Mike Lancanster is, trying to get you to fund a party game in which you vote on which of the players involved would be a terrible phone sex operator or would have the fewest people at their funeral. I suggest that you probably shouldn't play it. (KS link)
• We'll close with a game-related item that might be of interest to a few folks on this site: Pierô's Artbook 10th, this being a tenth anniversary retrospective of the artwork of Pierô, who debuted with Une Ombre sur Whitechapel — which most people will know under its reprint name of Mr. Jack — then became a hot commodity in 2008 thanks to his eye-catching work on Ghost Stories.
Pierô's Artbook 10th from ilinx édition will include 80-120 pages depending on the final funding total, with text in both French and English and a foreword by Ghost Stories designer Antoine Bauza. (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