• In June 2021, U.S. publisher Crafty Games completed a Kickstarter campaign for Buru from Stephen Wren, and the game is now moving through production, with Crafty hoping for a Gen Con 2022 debut ahead of a September 2022 retail release. (As is the case for all game announcements these days, release dates are tentative.) The Buru: Ambelau expansion would arrive in Q4 2022.
The short take on Buru is that players bid blindly for actions and resources, with which they activate cards and pay tribute to the spirits. The longer take is this:
Buru is a mid-weight, Euro-style board game for 1-4 players. Over five game rounds, you and your fellow players secretly deploy explorers to the four different regions of the island in order to gather resources, recruit islanders, set them to tasks, and pay tribute to the spirits revered there. The object of the game is to win the islanders' esteem. You can earn esteem in many ways, primarily by paying tribute, but also by pleasing elders, tasking local nobles, fulfilling the king's decrees, and holding a totem when any player pays tribute to that spirit.
At the end of the game, the player with the most esteem wins and is declared the new governor of Buru!
Ivion is a fighting card game with customizable elements, with each standalone set featuring two characters and retailing for US$40. In more detail:
Upon the field of battle, crush your opponent with various strikes, stabs, slashes, spells, and other mayhem at your disposal. Be careful, though, as they have numerous ways to block, dodge, parry, fizzle, and disrupt your assault. Only one can be the victor, and the battle will be bloody!
Nathaniel Levan's One Card Wonder, which I previewed at BGG.CON 2016, should reach U.S. stores in April 2022, and in Q2 2022 APE Games will crowdfund The Comic Book Bubble from designer Scott Almes. In this game, 2-6 players simultaneously select action cards to buy comics, manipulate the market, or use a card's superpower. The values of a comic genre rise and fall over the course of play, with everyone trying to cash out their collection before the bubble bursts.
Kevin G. Nunn's Dealers in Hope, covered here in November 2020, should hit
Pampero is a large design from Julián Pombo, co-designer of Mercado de Lisboa with Vital Lacerda, and this game seems like a fit for fans of Lacerda's work, although that might be the Ian O'Toole art and design speaking to me. Here's a short take on the design, which APE Games will crowdfund in October 2022 ahead of a scheduled 2023 release:
Pampero is a hand-management, card-driven action-selection game. Every player has a starting set of eight cards to be played on their own tableau, which contains two rows of spaces to activate actions on the different sectors of the board. Each turn, you have the option to play a card to the leftmost empty space of either row or to retrieve all cards from your tableau.
After three actions, a special phase takes place — consolidation, during which you retrieve the rightmost card from any row, generate batteries from stored energy, collect income, and advance the game timer. The player with the most money at the end of the game wins.