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• Japanese publisher TACTICAL GAMES is launching its first Kickstarter campaign in mid-2022 for Atlas Lost: Rise of the New Sovereigns from designer Totsuca Chuo, and this cover has a lot going on:
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A poster for that cover image should be somewhere in that campaign, but shipping posters worldwide is a rough thing to do, so I don't expect that to happen. In any case, here's a succinct game overview:
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This game is set in Atlas Lost, a world ruined by AI warfare. Players try to unearth lost technology and take control of a new world. Where will you go, what will you focus on, and what kind of world will you aim for?
Atlas Lost: Rise of the New Sovereigns is a tech-tree, resource management, and civilization game that can be played by 2-4 players. In the game set-up, you play a combination of three of the five available techs. Each of these techs employs different board game mechanisms. You must use cards, collect resources, and employ unearthed tech to build up your own troops and gather fame faster than the players around you. Whoever first scores 30 points wins.
Atlas Lost: Rise of the New Sovereigns is a tech-tree, resource management, and civilization game that can be played by 2-4 players. In the game set-up, you play a combination of three of the five available techs. Each of these techs employs different board game mechanisms. You must use cards, collect resources, and employ unearthed tech to build up your own troops and gather fame faster than the players around you. Whoever first scores 30 points wins.
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Lots of cat-in-banana cards exist, and your goal is to collect ten different cards first, using the powers on the cards to help make that happen while slipping up your opponents' plans. (Kickstarter)
• The description of The Finest Fish from Nathan and Jake Jenne and Last Night Games is pretty minimal — arrange colorful scales on your goldfish in order to create the finest fish in the show — but this image gives a clear idea of what you're doing in the game. (Kickstarter)
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• The Gig is a roll-and-write game for 1-6 players from designers Jamie Gray, Dann May, Robb Smigielski, and Lewis Shaw and publisher Braincrack Games that has a fantastic look mirroring jazz records from the mid-1900s. (Kickstarter)
I posted an unboxing video of a mock-up version of the game on TikTok, and you can discover the gist of how to play here:
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In The Gig, players are members of a jazz group improvising their way through a song, vying for the spotlight, and trying to please the audience while working up mind-blowing solos!
The game takes place over six rounds, a.k.a. "songs". Each song, players count down, then roll and place dice in real time to gain symbols and create patterns. When one player has placed all four of their dice, they shout "Take it to the bridge!" and other players must stop re-rolling and place the remainder of their dice. After placing all of their dice, each player can add the shape that their dice formed to their instrument's unique solo board, each of which offers a different challenge and way of scoring.
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Players can use symbols gained via the song and their solo boards to quickly change their dice, keep them for endgame scoring, or spend them to buy audience cards, each of which represents a newly-gained fan who will give you another way of scoring points at game's end.
After the set list of six songs has been played, the player with the most points gained from their solo, audience cards, harmonies, and symbol sets and majorities wins.
The game takes place over six rounds, a.k.a. "songs". Each song, players count down, then roll and place dice in real time to gain symbols and create patterns. When one player has placed all four of their dice, they shout "Take it to the bridge!" and other players must stop re-rolling and place the remainder of their dice. After placing all of their dice, each player can add the shape that their dice formed to their instrument's unique solo board, each of which offers a different challenge and way of scoring.
Players can use symbols gained via the song and their solo boards to quickly change their dice, keep them for endgame scoring, or spend them to buy audience cards, each of which represents a newly-gained fan who will give you another way of scoring points at game's end.
After the set list of six songs has been played, the player with the most points gained from their solo, audience cards, harmonies, and symbol sets and majorities wins.
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You draw the cat's action from one of four decks each turn, and you know the contents of those decks, so over time you'll have a better guess at what they want — but you have only one of each action-prediction card in hand, and to pick them back up you need to play a "leave me alone" card. If you're really confident, you can add a "full power" card to your guess to gain bonus favorability from the cat. Yes, the cat! In the end, whoever the cat likes best wins! (Kickstarter)
The setting for this game is true to life as in May 2017 my family visited a cat café in Tokyo, and we learned that the rules for interaction very much favor what the cats want. You can't pick up a cat to hold it or place it on your lap; you can buy food to entice the cats onto you, but of course if you do that, you might not want to disturb them, which means you'll be spending more money since cat cafés charge you based on how long you stick around.
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Visiting a cat café with the cat-agnostic Ken Shoda
Why do cat cafés exist? Our friend and frequent tour guide Ken Shoda told us that few people keep cats in their apartment since the apartments are small, cats are expensive, and people tend to work long hours. Better to get your cat fix as you need it on an hourly basis and not commit to cat care long term. (We currently have a cat with a torn ACL that might need surgery, so I know the pain of long-term care!)
The objectively best view of a cat: Underneath a clear shelf or table
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