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Crowdfunding Round-up: Digital Games Hit the Table in a Bevy of Nightmare Worlds

Crowdfunding Round-up: Digital Games Hit the Table in a Bevy of Nightmare Worlds
Board Game: Outlive
• Another day, another post-apocalyptic survival mission, this time in the form of Grégory Oliver's Outlive from La Boite de jeu, with you fighting against others for survival in a radioactive environment. Also, the game features miniatures — but you probably already guessed that. (KS link)

• Disaster of another type awaits in Plague Inc: The Board Game, an adaptation of the video game from James Vaughan and Ndemic Creations that allows you to try to overrun the world with your unique pathogen. Can you infect countries and kill the entire population within their borders? (KS link)

• Another digital-to-analog conversion is taking place in This War of Mine: The Board Game (note the helpful subtitle!) from Michał Oracz, Jakub Wiśniewski, and Awaken Realms. Now you can try to survive as a civilian in a city overrun by military forces on your tabletop! (KS link)

• On the flipside of Plague Inc, Michele Quondam's Virus from his own Giochix.it presents the more traditionally cooperative "fight the virus" narrative, with players invading a laboratory while watching for potential traitors. (KS link)

• Speaking of viruses, you can attempt to turn the United States red, white or blue in Campaign Trail from David Cornelius, Nathan Cornelius, and Cosmic Wombat Games, with up to six players employing multi-use cards to fundraise and collect electoral votes on their way to the presidency. (KS link)

Board Game: Hoard
Board Game: Dale of Merchants 2
• Okay, enough doom and gloom for now. How about a pleasant game of snatching as much loot as you can from a sleeping dragon, this being the premise of the set-collection, press-your-luck game Hoard from Tim Kings-Lynne, Julia Schiller, and Cheeky Parrot Games. (KS link)

• Wealth acquisition of a more traditional manner is present in Dale of Merchants 2 from Sami Laasko and Snowdale Design, although your end goal in this deck-building game filled with anthropomorphic animals — which can be played on its own or combined with Dale of Merchants — is to complete your merchant stall, not simply amass a pile of loot. (KS link)

• Cute animals are also at play in 9DKP, a trading card game from Erick Scarecrow and ESC-Toy Ltd that consists of three decks — kats, zombies, and survivors — that can face off against one another. (KS link)

Board Game: One Deck Dungeon
• Chris Cieslik of Asmadi Games released a beta version of his roguelike dungeon crawl card game One Deck Dungeon at Gen Con 2015, and now he's moving forward with the final version of the game, which accommodates 1-2 players with a single set or up to four players with two copies. (KS link)

• Aside from dungeon crawls, in a list of common game tropes you'll find pirates, zombies, pirate zombies, pirate zombies on a dungeon crawl, and robot assembly. Thus, it's no surprise to find another game about robot assembly on KS, specifically the self-published BetaBotz from Gargitt Au and Zack Connaughton. I don't see what differentiates this robot-assembly game from others, but I'm not a robot-assembly connoisseur, so perhaps others can spot such details better than me. (KS link)

• The zombie portion of this c.f. round-up comes from a German version of Jane Austen's Matchmaker with Zombies from Warm Acre. (Spieleschmiede link)

• Another common gaming trope is railroad management, and frequent Age of Steam expansion designer Alban Viard offers his own take on the subject — as detailed in this designer diary on BGG News — in Tramways from his own AVStudioGames. (KS link)

• Nearly one year after its initial KS attempt, the disk-flicking, planet-destroying game Cosmic Kaboom from Matt Loomis and Minion Games has orbited back onto the crowdfunding circuit, with the game being released in both a regular and KS-only deluxe version. (KS link)

Board Game: Chief Inspector
 
• In 2015 Game Salute released Philip duBarry's Skyway Robbery — a game of thieves set in the steampunkish Gaslight Empire — and now duBarry and Game Salute are giving players the other side of the story with Chief Inspector, in which investigators try to apprehend the most notorious criminals in the Gaslight Empire without becoming too corrupt in the process. (KS link)

• The Gaslight Empire is also the setting for Garrett Herdter's City of Outcasts, a microgame in which players use special-powered allies to secure support for themselves from those in control, with optional location cards allowing for a slightly larger area-control game. (KS link)

• A similar battle for governmental control takes place in Coup: Anarchy G54, an expansion for Rikki Tahta's Coup: Rebellion G54 from Indie Boards & Cards that adds six new roles and a new action card to the base game. (KS link)

• Battles of a more traditional manner take place in Ken Whitehurst's Polyversal, a science-fiction mass-combat miniatures game from Collins Epic Wargames that takes place on a "plausible-future Earth", according to the publisher. I appreciate the openness of this phrase, mostly because it makes me ponder what non-plausible-future Earths might be like. (KS link)

• If you've ever dreamed of playing Dejarik (or even know what Dejarik is), then you probably want to check out Hologrid Monster Battle, a hybrid digital/analog tactical CCG from HappyGiant with monsters designed by Phil Tippett. (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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