Tell Weird Stories, Race in Three Dimensions, and Create Peacock Plumes

• Let's run through a few game-based Kickstarter projects in this post, starting with Reality Shift by Mat Hanson and Academy Games, which leans heavily into a Tron vibe for a 3D racing game in which you can shift blocks to create new paths for your lightbike, obstruct existing paths, or crush opponents to force them to respawn elsewhere.

The Kickstarter campaign (link) includes options for a regular game and a deluxe one so that you can take the nine cubes in each game and combine them to create more challenging racetracks — although I would think you could do this with two regular games as well. Reality Shift is due out in mid-2021.

• U.S. publisher Calliope Games is Kickstarting (link) a trio of releases due out in Q4 2021, with Brendan Hansen's Enchanted Plumes being a 2-6 player game in which you collect cards in a peacock tail-shaped array, with the longest row of cards counting against you and everything else being positive. You can make the first row of a plume as wide or as narrow as you wish, and each subsequent row must have exactly one fewer card and the color of a card in this row must be among the cards in the row immediately above it; if you complete a plume by placing a row of one card, you receive a bonus equal to the number of cards in the plume.

Zach Weisman's Allegory is another 2-6 player card game, but in this game you bid to collect cards in three themes, with you allocating your winning bid for a card on the remaining cards on display. Instead of placing a bid in a future round, you can pass to claim the card with the most money on it; that card might be worth negative points, but at least you now have money! When a player claims their tenth card, the game ends at the end of that round, then everyone scores only for their lowest-valued theme.

Mass Transit from Chris Leder and Kevin Rodgers is a co-operative game for 1-6 players in which dual-use cards create train, bus, and ferry routes out of a city and allow you to move commuters along those routes. If you get everyone home to the suburbs before all the cards are played, you win.

• Tales of the Fabulist is the first release from Stacey Welchley, Jason C. Hughes, and Monkey Gun Games, and it falls into the category of "party game that you likely won't keep score on", similar to Concept and others. Here's an overview of this 2-10 player game that's due out (KS link) in the first half of 2021:

Quote:

Tales of the Fabulist is an interactive fiction device, a party game, an improvisation system, a drinking game, an ice-breaker at retreats, and an excellent gift for the young and old. You don't have to be William Shakespeare to have a great time making sh*t up regaling your loved ones with a fabricated fable. Here's how easy it is:

After the decks are shuffled and cards are dealt, The Fabulist begins by introducing the characters in the context of a grand quest upon which the characters will embark. The Fabulist has sixty seconds to weave the beginning of the tale, then play rotates clockwise. The next player selects a plot twist (PT) out of their hand and places it on the included playmat in the next open PT space. That player continues the story for 30 seconds, working in the words or phrases on the newly played card into the story. When the time runs out, draw a new plot twist card. Play continues clockwise. The lucky person who places the final plot twist card has sixty seconds to wrap up the story as best they can.

Board Game: Tales of the Fabulist: Fantasy Deck

Now that the fable has ended, everyone gets to suggest a "Moral of the Story". The player with the funniest moral wins the quest card. If your group is competitive, the person with the most quest cards at the end of the session wins.

• SquareOne is a board game console from Wizama that's intended to merge board games and video games, with you having physical elements that you do stuff with while the console shows the results of actions, resolves die rolls, and does other things depending on whatever game you're playing.

The device is pricey at €500 (KS link), and it's launching with licenses for titles such as the virtual trading card game Urban Rivals and the giant board Cthulhu Wars, in addition to original games such as Crystal Bay by Roberto Fraga, who visited the BGG booth at FIJ 2020 to demo this design.