Reworking Kanban for Bots, Revisiting Ra, and Replaying the Vietnam War

• Vital Lacerda's Weather Machine from Eagle-Gryphon Games just finished raking in more than US$1 million on Kickstarter, and the designer and publisher are already dropping details about their next project: Bot Factory, co-designed by João Quintela Martins.

Just as 2019's Mercado de Lisboa is a small game based on an element in Lacerda's 2017 Lisboa, Bot Factory is derived from elements in the larger games Kanban: Driver's Edition and Kanban EV. Here's a summary of how it works:

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Your goal in Bot Factory is to gather projects and parts, then assemble bots, thereby fulfilling demand goals and improving the value of the bot you are making. Sandra, the factory manager from Kanban, is present here, moving to different departments and using the players' spaces. The game uses the same worker-placement mechanism from Kanban in which turn order is established by the workers' positions on the board.

• The term "purple haze" has connections to a particular era and culture in U.S. history, but Polish publisher PHALANX is using that term for a game about another aspect of U.S. history that took place about the same time.

Bernard Grzybowski's Purple Haze is a 1-6 player co-operative "story-creation campaign game" set in Vietnam in 1967 that will be presented for funding on Gamefound in January 2022 for release in 2023. Here's the initial pitch from PHALANX:

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You look at the wrecked Huey, thankful you survived the crash. It got hit somewhere over the jungle. You lost the pilot. The gunner just fell out. Gone. On your way down you saw a glimpse of the other Huey. You think it got hit too, but you can't be sure. You look around at your squad — wild-eyed Marines fresh out of boot camp — and sigh heavily. You gotta move fast. VC will be coming...

In Purple Haze, you lead a squad of U.S. Marines through the dense jungles, flooded rice paddies, and straw-thatched villages of a war-torn country. Gut-wrenching choices will determine the fate of you and your mission, showing if you have what it takes to survive.

It is in part a story-creation game, in part a tactical combat game, and in part a campaign game. Your decisions determine the story. Your tactics decide the outcome of life and death firefights. Your men will suffer. Some won't make it home. Those that do will get wiser, get tougher. The goal: Complete the mission, and get out alive.

• In September 2020, I noted that U.S. publisher 25th Century Games was looking for an artist for a new edition of Reiner Knizia's Ra, and Ian O'Toole has now revealed his impressive work on this title:

Very excited to share my new box design for @ReinerKnizia's classic Ra, coming soon from @25thCG pic.twitter.com/xrPFRqogCn
— Ian O'Toole (@ianotooletweets) December 17, 2021