New Game Round-up: Superheroes Battle Debt, Pirates Battle Poor Memory, and A.R.K. Agents Battle Raxxon

New Game Round-up: Superheroes Battle Debt, Pirates Battle Poor Memory, and A.R.K. Agents Battle Raxxon
Board Game: Debtzilla
Debtzilla from designer Xeo Lye and Singapore-based publisher Capital Gains seems like an inspired mash-up of familiar game tropes, with superheroes fighting villains while also needing to manage their finances. Here's an overview of this design, which hits Kickstarter on September 19, 2017:

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In the fictional nation of Banana Republic, the incompetent government has caused a wave of financial crime. Players take on the role of heroes fighting the villains that scam ordinary citizens. However, the heroes are human beings just like anyone else, with jobs to perform, daily expenses to pay and crime-fighting gadgets to buy. Little do they know that their credit card bills are only feeding the ultimate monster of mass destruction: Debtzilla!

Debtzilla is a cooperative deck-building game with escalation mechanisms based on financial related concepts such as compounding interest and inflation. If the players are too stingy with their finances, they will find their heroes too weak to be any good in a fight. On the other hand, purchasing too many expensive gadgets will rack up debt, causing the final boss to become too powerful to possibly defeat. The players must work together to make smart financial decisions in order to save the citizens of Banana Republic.
Board Game: Crossfire
• Designer Emerson Matsuuchi made a splash at the Origins Game Fair with the release of Century: Spice Road, and now he has another title debuting at Gen Con 2017 in August: Crossfire, a game for 5-10 players that plays in 5-10 minutes. How is that possible? Here's an overview of the setting:

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The Intel is solid. Raxxon will be transporting a VIP through a sector heavy with civilian traffic. This makes the mission a tricky one. You'll be working alone as they try to throw you off their tail. Don't be fooled. You need to get in and get the job done before the chance passes by. Just be sure to not get caught in the crossfire. Deception and negotiation are your greatest tools. Complete your mission, no matter the costs.

Introducing Crossfire, a game in the world of Specter Ops that takes players back into the dystopian struggle between Raxxon and A.R.K. This time, players compete in two teams to either protect or assassinate a Raxxon VIP, while trying to determine whether other players at the table are who they really claim to be. The clock is ticking...
Chris Leder's City of Gears first appeared in a self-published edition in 2012 via The Game Crafter, then in 2015 Arcane Wonders announced that the game would be part of its "Dice Tower Essentials" — only to part ways in 2016. Now Leder has announced that Grey Fox Games has picked up the game for release in 2018, with designer Daryl Andrews collaborating on the final design.

Board Game: Memoarrr!
Memoarrr! is a very different game from Edition Spielwiese's first release (Cottage Garden in 2016), with this quick-playing game from newcomer Carlo Bortolini debuting at the Berlin Brettspiel Con in July 2017. What do you get when you combine pirates with a memory game? This:

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To play the match-and-memory game Memoarrr!, 2 to 4 players need the power of recollection and the luck of pirates. Only then can they make their escape from the island of Captain Goldfish, their pockets lined with rubies, before the lava swallows them up.

In turn order, players reveal locations that are connected via the animal or the landscape to the most recently revealed location. If someone reveals a location without any connection, that player is out of the round. The last remaining pirate grabs one of the valuable treasures. Then, all revealed locations are turned face down before the search can start afresh.

As the cards do not change position during a game, players collect more and more information each round, enabling them to reveal new connections — but sometimes a little bit of luck is all it takes to get that treasure.

For advanced players, each animal comes with an additional special action that is triggered when a connected location is revealed — and they make Memoarrr! even more exciting and fun to play.
Publisher Michael Schmitt notes that artist Pablo Fontagnier is "a very famous German graffiti artist", and his Instagram account has more than eighty thousand followers, which indeed qualifies as "very famous" in my ranking of all the German graffiti artists that I know.

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