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• David V. H. Peters has designed several network-building games, and two of those — namely, Paris Connection and the SdJ-recommended Samarkand: Routes to Riches (co-designed with Harry Wu) — are available now in Queen Games' fourth KS project of this calendar year. In the former, you're building train lines through France and manipulating stock, while in the latter you're marrying into important families and building trade networks to ensure the wealth of your newfound relatives. (KS link)
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• Tabletop miniatures has its fair share of dieselpunk settings, but board games? Not so much. Voodoo Games is attempting to fill that niche with André Schillo's Xibalba. The nuance of the thematic backdrop is a bit confusing, but the main gist is an alternate-1940s when an alien race visited Earth and sparked a global scramble. The precious alien resource (this time our MacGuffin is called "paragon") must be had at all costs! (KS link)
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• Block wargame enthusiasts may be familiar with VentoNuovo Games, a European publisher with five previously published titles. The man behind the company, Emanuele Santandrea, has decided to take his newest design, Moscow '41, the KS route. It simulates one of the most important military campaigns of WWII; the Russians playing goal-line defense, the Germans in Moscow-or-bust mode. The genre is unfamiliar territory for me, so I don't know if this ground is well-trod, but even if you're thinking "been there, done that", did you get a T-shirt? Because this campaign has T-shirts. (KS link)
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• If you were to sit down and come up with a name for a publisher that would instantly convey classic ameritrash, Vorpal Chainsword Games would be a likely contender. Designers Joshua Carlson and Cory Scanlan have created Ravingspire, which sets the players as adventurers wandering around a mad wizard's tower — and I do mean wandering because it employs the dreaded roll-and-move. The game certainly carries an aura of the '90s (see the KS video for further proof) but also seems aware of modern game design conventions. (KS link)
• The award for best title in this round-up goes to Shenanigans: The Musical. The game from designer Gregory Carslaw and publisher The People's Orchestra takes the belabored social deduction genre and gives it a smart new coat of paint. You're members of an orchestra trying to root out the person who is screwing up the number with their poor instrumentation. In a unique twist, the publisher, a registered charity, will dump any profits generated by the project into its initiatives to make orchestra accessible to more people. (KS link)
• Innovation is coming! Innovation is coming! Gamers are always on the lookout for something fresh and new, and Kickstarter is still a place where the unorthodox can thrive. The single most innovative game product design I have seen in years is P. D. Warne's use of lanterns and shadows to create a virtual game board. He's calling it the Larklamp magic lantern game system, and it functions as a sort of bamboo-and-paper game "console", with interchangeable side panels that can be swapped out like game cartridges. Snyxtrap is the first release for the system, but Warne has plans for other games down the line. (KS link)
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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