New Game Round-up: Rolling Freight Rolls Out, Québec Is Ludified & More

A guy takes a couple of days off, and the games spring up everywhere. Let's get to them...

• APE Games has launched a Kickstarter funding program for Kevin G. Nunn's Rolling Freight. Said APE's Kevin Brusky when announcing this program: "I've been working for well over a year on APE Games' most ambitious game yet... This will be by far [our] most expensive game to date, and that's why I'm asking for your help." APE Games is hoping to raise $18,000, or the equivalent of 300 preorders. Head to the Kickstarter page for a video from Brusky giving an overview of the game. The (non-final) rulebook is available on APE's Rolling Freight page.

• In other news from APE Games, Order of the Stick Adventure Game: The Shortening – an expansion announced at least as far back as 2009 – is headed to the printer with an expected release date of Q3 2011. The Shortening will be sold on its own, in addition to being packaged in the forthcoming Order of the Stick: Deluxe Edition, also due out Q3 2011.

• Canadian publisher Le Scorpion Masqué is launching its largest game project to date: the release of Québec from Philippe Beaudoin and Pierre Poissant-Marquis at Spiel 2011 in October. Here's a brief description from the publisher:

Quote:

Québec puts players in charge of rich families, whose goal is to brand history with their name by being active participants in the construction of the city throughout its four centuries.

Québec is a true representation of its people: strong European roots and a very American personality. With Québec, players will discover a game rich with European mechanisms as well as strong player interactions and theme, some of the key aspects of American games.

The players' goal is to gain prestige by building 44 historical buildings found in the city of Québec, including the Royal Battery, the Parliement, the Notre-Dame Basilica and of course, the famous Château Frontenac. The players will also want to be recognized as influencial figures in the various zones of power: religion, politics, commerce and culture. Any contribution to the Citadelle will also be well regarded. Québec introduces a brilliant new game mechanism called "cascade"; at the end of each century, the majority player in a zone of power will be able to cascade half of his workers in the next zone, allowing him to score more points and eventually, obtain even more majorities.

• Fantasy Flight Games has announced a "new" game from Wilko Manz called Black Gold. I say "new" as the game appears to be the same as the 1999 release Gigaten from Kosmos, with tweaks and variants and a player count of 2-5 instead of 3-4. (Since it's not clear how distinct the two games are, for now BGG will list them separately, merging them in the future should they turn out to be cousins or closer.)

• Fantasy Flight has also announced another expansion for Arkham Horror: Miskatonic Horror, which includes components that can be mixed with all of the previous expansions, in addition to being playable with only the base game.

• Steve Jackson Games is shipping two items to stores: the new edition of Give Me the Brain from James Ernest and the Munchkinomicon booster pack, which can be added to any of the many Munchkin games from SJG.

• French site Jeux sur un Plateau has published a video demonstration of Kramer and Kiesling's King Arthur, coming from alea in Q2 2011, that was filmed at Nürnberg 2011. Of note to alea fans is the presence of German, English and French text on the game box and cards. Clearly alea is trying to avoid the lag time between release in Europe and the U.S., which was around six months for both Macao and Glen More, by putting three languages in one box. Bravo!