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The first item on the list already exists, but only in Japanese. Deca Slayer from Seiji Kanai and Hisashi Hayashi was released in March 2017 by Arclight and Switch Games, and now those companies are funding an English-language version of the game.
Deca Slayer is based on Hayashi's Decathlon, a card game in which players use athletes' abilities to run, jump and throw to compete in various sporting events. The stakes are higher in Deca Slayer as now you're using the melee, magic, and ranged weapon abilities of heroes to take down various monsters. Some monsters require you to strike with a magic user first, then hit with melee weapons repeatedly, while others require all players to strike simultaneously with all their ranged attacks. Some monsters are defeated by total strength, others by who can keep fighting the longest. The two best players in each round receive treasure, which sometimes has bonus powers, while everyone else drafts a bonus hero to restock their troops in addition to the one hero that everyone takes. I hadn't thought about this until typing out this paragraph, but the bidding and restock/reward mechanism calls to mind Knizia's Taj Mahal, with players needing to know when to hold back and when to bear down on others. (KS link)
In recent years Ernest has been reworking and re-releasing older Cheapass titles — Give Me the Brain!, Button Men, Unexploded Cow, and more — and apparently now it's time to tinker with Girl Genius: The Works. This new version of the game will be released in four standalone decks, each with sixty cards and each featuring different characters and effects, although you can mix cards as you like to make a deck that suits your own tastes. To play, lay out twelve cards in a patchwork grid, spin one card 180º on your turn to see what "pops" and which effects take place, and be the first to score 70 points. (KS link)
Ernest visited the BGG booth during the 2018 GAMA Trade Show to show off the game and introduce it to gamers who are less doddering than the two of us:
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• The Red Dragon Inn is a game series that also features adventurers taking a break following their dungeon time, and publisher SlugFest Games is funding the latest title in that series: The Red Dragon Inn: Allies – Spyke and Flower, a standalone two-player game that features the main characters from Steve Jackson Games' Munchkin series. Those munchkins are everywhere these days, even in other Red Dragon Inn games if you combine this title with others! (KS link)
• Chartered: The Golden Age is the first title from publisher Jolly Dutch Productions, and the game is thoroughly Dutch, with players being merchants in 1600s Amsterdam, putting up warehouses and buying stock with the long-term goal of ending up richer than anyone else. (KS link)
• Artist and designer David Ausloos and publisher Sylex have embedded a calm, otherworldly look throughout Dreamscape, a game for 2-4 players in which you collect colored dreamshards from various landscapes, avoid Mr. Nightmare, then build landscapes of your own to satisfy personal desires and score points. (KS link) For more details, check out this overview from Sylex's Pierre Stennebruggen, who visited the BGG booth at the game fair in Cannes in late February 2018 to show off the game:
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• Mike Gnade of Rock Manor Games funded Maximum Apocalypse in early 2017, delivered the game in early 2018, and is now returning to Kickstarter with solid ratings on the base game to fund the Gothic Horrors expansion, along with a couple of smaller expansions. Gothic Horrors presents players with two new scenarios that challenge their ability to survive the end of the world by confronting them with older nightmares: vampires and elder ones. (KS link)
• Another cooperative survival game on Kickstarter right now is MourneQuest from Leonard Boyd, David Brashaw, and Backspindle Games. This game, based on a novel of the same name from Garry McElherron, pits players against creatures from Irish folklore, including the Shimnavore and other nightmarish creatures. (KS link)
• A smaller-scale co-op survival game awaits in The Awful Orphanage from Workhouse Games, with the orphan players trying to avoid orderlies and locate magic items to escape from Gaunt and Sinister Man. A competitive mode is included as well should you prefer to reinforce your orphan status by escaping on your own. (KS link)
• Should you prefer to survive horrors in space, you can turn to Lifeform from Mark Chaplin, Toby Farrands, and Hall or Nothing Productions, with one player acting as the nearly indestructible, incredibly hostile lifeform of the title and everyone else acting as potential meat for said lifeform. (KS link)
• Deep Water Games is a new U.S. publisher that's launching with a half-dozen titles in 2018 thanks to a publishing partnership with Taiwanese publisher EmperorS4, which previously licensed titles to different publishers and which will now have everything coming to the U.S. through deep water, i.e. the Pacific Ocean. The second set of three games coming from Deep Water consists of Mystery of the Temples (in which players collect crystals to break color-coded curses), Round House (a rondel-driven hit from SPIEL '16 in which you build glory for your family), and Sorcerer & Stones, a pattern-building puzzly game described in the video below (KS link):
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• Craig Stern's True Messiah from Sinister Design is back on Kickstarter for a second go at funding. This deck-building game challenges you to capture holy cities owned by other would-be messiahs, eliminate their followers, or strip their deck of miracle cards. Oh, and you can kill them as well. (KS link)
• Mobster Metropolis from Carl Berglind, Joel Ibson, Karl Nord, and STORMAKTEN Production superficially resembles True Messiah as you're trying to raise yourself to the top of the heap by attacking others, invading their turf, and having a better reputation than anyone else, but the cards feature mobsters, not miracles, and you need to watch out for police raids. The game includes a horse head card, of course, because of course it does. (KS link)
• Village Pillage from Peter C. Hayward, Tom Lang, and Jellybean Games features theft of a far friendlier nature, with each player laying down a card on their left and right each round to face off against neighbors, collect turnips, and purchase relics. (KS link)
• The first lines on BGG describing Imperius from Kolossal Games are not inspiring: "The Empress has died. The heir to the Crown Imperius has vanished." Oh, no, another take on the leader-is-gone-replace-the-leader idea that we've seen hundreds of times before, but thankfully I can point to this post by designer Grant Rodiek that inspires far more enthusiasm about what the game is and how it might play. In short, Rodiek has merged his love of Dune with a funky card-drafting system that will keep you on your toes. (KS link)
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Editor's note: Please don't post links to other Kickstarter projects in the comments section. Write to me via the email address in the header, and I'll consider them for inclusion in a future crowdfunding round-up. Thanks! —WEM
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