Publishers Promote Plundering in Escape Plan, Raids, Ship of Treasures, and More

Non-final cover by Ian O'Toole

• Designer Vital Lacerda has been wowing game fans since he arrived on the scene with Vinhos in 2010, and his next release with frequent publishing partner Eagle-Gryphon Games has been in the works since before that time. In Escape Plan, which will hit Kickstarter in 2018, 2-4 players have committed a heist together, but now it's every thief for themselves as the police start closing in. In more detail:

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After a successful bank heist, the robbers retreat to a quiet city to lay low and enjoy the good life. Having largely hidden the cash, they have invested the rest in locations throughout the city. All is going according to plan until the police get a break in the case. Accusations are made, fingers are pointed, and everyone is a suspect.

Chaos ensues as the police call in the SWAT team and close the city’s exits. Life is no longer easy for the thieves. The only choice now is to escape the city as soon as possible, but the robbers need a plan — a good route that allows them to escape the city while recovering the money they have invested and, if possible, all the money they have hidden.

Time is short, and with the police and SWAT at their heels, it will be necessary to pull some strings to calm the situation. To accomplish this, time and money must be spent to hire the city’s gangs to create diversions. Bribing the cops isn't cheap, either. Disguises may help, but they will not fool everyone. Setting the cops on the trail of the others will allow you a better chance of escape, but the other thieves are thinking the same. Which player will make the best plan to escape with the most money and be the winner? Or will the cops foil the robber's plans and lockdown the city before the thieves escape?

In Escape Plan, players are the thieves, but they may influence the cops' moves every turn. The robbers move on a modular board trying to reach the best spots to recover their loot and escape from the city with more money than the other thieves. The cops are trying to thwart their escape plan — by force if necessary. The players play cards to aid their escape and slow the other players down. The players take actions that allow them to move and to engage gangs, mules, and snitches.

As a tactical game with no direct conflict, it contains asymmetric roles set by missions that players may achieve during the game while avoiding the police. The players' roles as thieves are individual with every player for themselves. In the end, only the player who escapes with the most cash wins.

• Another game along similar lines — a gang of thieves theoretically working together while worrying only about themselves in the end — is Robin Hood and the Merry Men, a game from Krstevski, Krstevska, Matovska, Poole, Toshevski, and Final Frontier Games that will also come to Kickstarter in 2018.

• Stealing is also required in Professor Treasure's Secret Sky Castle from Jason D. Kingsley and Level 99 Games, with this being a two-player competitive puzzle game in which you're trying to take back precious items stolen and hidden by Professor Treasure. Level 99 Games had originally announced this title in April 2016 along with two other two-player games, and it's now moving toward release in February 2018.

• More thieving takes place in Ship of Treasures, which was designed by fourth-graders Olivia Wasilewski and Brynna Siewers and which won the 2016 Chicago Toy & Game Fair's annual Young Inventor Challenge. As part of their prize, Pressman has now published the game, which is being sold exclusively in the Target U.S. retail chain. Here's an overview:

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Grab a treasure map, hide your treasure chests, and start your search for hidden treasure in Ship of Treasures. Lift up trapdoors to reveal loot to plunder from the other pirates, but beware — you could end up with cannonballs instead of booty. You need a good strategy and some lucky rolls of the dice to be the first pirate to capture treasure chests from each of your fellow pirates and win the game!

• Alessio Cavatore and River Horse Ltd., who released Jim Henson's Labyrinth: The Board Game in 2016, are back with a new title in a similar vein: Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal: Board Game. Description for this 2-4 player game due out in early 2018 is minimal: "Will Jen and Kira manage to find the Shard and heal the Dark Crystal?" To keep in line with the other games in this post, they will ideally pocket the Shard, then fence it for enough to retire in the Bahamas.

• To close out our special thieving edition of BGG News, in June 2018 IELLO will release Raids, a Viking-themed game from Brett J. Gilbert and Matthew Dunstan. I received an overview of the game at SPIEL '17 and offer this possibly accurate description, as well as pics of a mock-up copy that features final art, but not final graphic design:

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In Raids, players sail from island to island to collect vikings and viking-related paraphernalia, using them fight one another for good spaces and fight monsters for points.

In more detail, the game lasts four rounds, and at the start of each round tiles are laid out at the various locations on the path that all players must follow. On a turn, a player moves to either an empty spot on the path to claim one of the tiles located there or to an occupied spot. In the latter case, the attacking player must sacrifice a viking, then the defending player must sacrifice two vikings or vacate the space; if they sac two vikings, then the attacker must remove three or leave. Eventually, someone must leave.

You can collect runes with an eye toward having lots of the same type or collect goods to sell at the end of the round. You might gather axes to give you better odds against monsters. You can collect more vikings for your crew.

At the end of each round, players score majority bonuses depending on the tiles that were revealed before the round started. After four rounds, whoever has the most points wins!