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Crowdfunding Round-up: Seize the Epic Hate in a Tiny Home with Killer Eyelashes

Crowdfunding Round-up: Seize the Epic Hate in a Tiny Home with Killer Eyelashes
Board Game: Seize the Bean
• As January 2018 continues, the number of game projects launching on Kickstarter continues to escalate, with a wide variety of games on offer to serve (possibly) every flavor of gamer under the sun — and speaking of serving, let's start this round-up with Seize the Bean, a deck-builder from Andy Couch, Dylan Howard Cromwell, and Quality Beast in which you must manage a line of thirsty customers each turn before taking actions to upgrade your café's decor or expand your product line. In the end, reputation is all that matters — well, that and resin sugar cubes used as a resource within the game. The intro video on KS is charming and a far cry from what we'll close out with this time around... (KS link)

• Service of a different type is needed to succeed in The Red Dragon Inn 7: The Tavern Crew, a standalone expansion from Jeff Morrow, Sam Waller, and SlugFest Games for The Red Dragon Inn series of games that involves four new characters competing yet again to hold onto as many gold coins as possible. (KS link)

• Artyom Nichipurov's Warpgate from Wolff Designa fills the role of SF-based hand-management, area control game with a modular space-y game board for this week's round-up. (KS link)

• For a different take on the SF genre, we have Home on Lagrange from Jordan Anderson-Hyland, Callum Badger, and Grizzly Games, with this being a card game in which players must assemble a 1970s-looking space station from a series of modules. (KS link)

Board Game: Nemesis
• In the 1-5 player survival sci-fi game Nemesis from Adam Kwapiński, Awaken Realms, and Rebel, players are woken from hibernation as a crew of a spaceship. A critical system failure has taken placed, and the spaceship can't continue its cruise. Can you figure out what is causing this failure and fix the situation to safely return back to Earth? That story might sound a tad familiar, and the look of the game might also ring a few bells, but that's clearly a plus for a lot of people as this co-op minis game has tallied $2 million in support. (KS link)

• Horror of a different genre awaits in Tiny Epic Zombies from Scott Almes and Gamelyn Games, with this design featuring co-op play (both with player-controlled zombies and with an AI zombie force), competitive play (ditto), solitaire play, and tiny figures with holes in their hands that can be filled with even tinier weapons. (KS link)

• Zombies also play a role in Killer Eyelashes, a card game from Luis Castro and Fidel Lorite based on a short film that Lorite made in 2007 and a gamebook Lorite made subsequently. In the game, you take the role of a superpowered drag queen in a post-apocalyptic world who must defeat make-up-wearing zombies and other, lesser drag queens (in your mind anyway) to accomplish your goals. (KS link)

• I would not have expected to see a miniatures-based version of American football on Kickstarter, especially not from a UK publisher, but here we are, with UK-based Fourth Quarter Miniatures offering Fourth Quarter Football, a game in which players choose plays from a deck that construct prior to play, with 32mm miniatures moving across the field and dice determining the result of how a down plays out. (KS link)

'• Worthington Publishing is releasing only 250 copies of War Along the Chesapeake, volume one in its three-volume "War of 1812 Campaign Series", and 161 copies have already been claimed as I write this note, so hasten to investigate this project should your tastes lie in this direction. (KS link)

• Let's close with a few words about HATE from Raphaël Guiton, Jean-Baptiste Lullien, Nicolas Raoult, CMON Limited, and Guillotine Games, but since the game is rated M for mature audiences, I thought I should post this behind a spoiler tag in case children are looking over your shoulders at this moment:

Spoiler (click to reveal)
From gallery of W Eric Martin
Much to my disappointment, this game fails to adapt any of the nuances of Peter Bagge's much-loved comic book series Hate into its setting, gameplay, or graphic design, leaving us steeping in all of the nihilism with none of the humor.

While Bagge had appeared in publications such as Robert Crumb's Weirdo in the early 1980s, he hadn't had much visibility in the comics industry until the debut of Neat Stuff in 1985, an oversized comic bursting with energy and multiple smart-stupid characters. Buddy Bradley first appeared in Neat Stuff in comic strips about "The Bradleys", then graduated to his own series in 1990 with Hate, one of the most successful non-superhero comics of that era.

Hate stripped Buddy of his family and detailed his life in Seattle, overlapping with the grunge movement of that time, despite not intentionally being a part of it. The comic was an edgy Adult Swim comic a decade before that channel launched, dealing with drugs, sex, bad behavior, and a depressing yet realistic outlook on life that mirrored the feelings of young adults from that era (speaking as someone who was 22 in 1990) in an over-the-top Wolvertonian style that disgusted you while still evoking sympathy for the messed-up main characters.

Halfway through the series, Bagge ditched Seattle, moving Buddy to New Jersey with longtime girlfriend and eventual wife Lisa Leavenworth, taking the character into adulthood, if not maturity. I haven't read the comic in close to twenty years, having skipped all the annual publications that followed its conclusion with issue #30. I don't know how well the comic has aged, but man, I loved it at the time! Perhaps CMON and company will pull off a more faithful adaptation when it comes time to release Girly Girl: The Board Game. (KS link)

From gallery of W Eric Martin
Swearing is obligatory when discussing Hate

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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