• Ares Games and Gremlin Project have an Earth defense project planned for release in early 2015, specifically two expansions for Romano and Surace's Galaxy Defenders: Operation Strikeback and Extinction Protocol. (KS link) These expansions allow players to strike an alien base on Earth's moon, then take the battle to the invaders' home planet. This KS project reached its goal within minutes, so apparently lots of folks feel strongly about keeping Earth safe. Good for them!
• Backspindle Games plans to release a second edition of Mark Rivera's Luchador! Mexican Wrestling Dice before the end of 2014, with the game ideally being finished in time for sales and demos at Spiel 2014 in October. (KS link) This second edition includes two new wrestlers, individual strengths and weaknesses for each wrestler, and a 3D wrestling ring; an upgrade pack is available for those who purchased the game's first edition.
• Seiji Kanai's new card game Gods' Gambit debuts from Arclight in Japan on June 1, 2014 at the Tokyo Game Market, but an English version from Analog Games is being funded on KS for release in early 2015. (KS link) I didn't even realize that companies in Japan could now run KS projects, but I'm slow that way sometimes. Here's an overview of the game, which until I see more could perhaps be described as a superpowered UNO:
By playing a card from your hand of either the same color (same location) or the same value (same trouble) as on the playing table, you clear one of the quests bestowed upon you. When one player has rid himself of all of the cards (quests) in his hand, or when a certain period of time has passed (when you've drawn four special cards from the draw deck), that round ends. The player who rid himself of cards gets closer to the High Heavens, but those with cards remaining are pushed away even further.
The gods can also use their faithful servants for their own purposes. They can help their masters to do away with surplus quests, or cause trouble for the other gods by imposing more quests on them. However, take care when you do this because all such acts remain in memory as bad karma. If you manage to complete all of your quests, your accumulated bad karma will be ignored, but if you fail and have quests remaining, they will become a heavy burden.
• Queen Games has racked up more than $80k for a reprint project of Peter Prinz's Thebes, with a copy of Thebes: The Tomb Raiders card game and the stretch goal game Maharani thrown into the mix. (KS link)
• Crazy Bricks is working with Steve Jackson Games to fund Munchkin Bricks, with these being Munchkin-themed accessory items for use with "brick characters", a.k.a. LEGO minifigures and other such toys. (KS link)
• Thy Realm is a card-based "miniatures" game, with the miniatures being cardboard stand-ups. (KS link) Not sure what this brings to the table that hasn't been done before, but if nothing else, someone can earn Geekgold by adding it to the BGG database.
• Designer Andrea Meyer is in the pre-funding stages for a new edition of Stimmvieh, her first published game from 1998 and one in which players are scrounging for votes and donations for the political candidate they represent. Right now Meyer is looking for fans on Startnext, and once a certain number of people fan the project, the funding sluice opens. (Startnext link)
• Following in the wake of Robot Turtles is Code Monkey Island from Raj Sidhu, with the goal of the game being to expose kids "to fundamental programming concepts like control structures, data structures, Boolean logic and operators, and assignment and mathematical operations" while also being something that people want to play. (KS link) Another possible addition to the BGG database...
• On Friday, May 30, 2014, Level 99 Games will launch a KS project for a revised edition of BattleCON: War of Indines. Here's a brokeback preview image from the publisher:
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