Kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms

[$iljanus]

So your wife is now hooked on kickstarter games?

I wish!

[Lordnine]

The number of Kickstarter games I’ve received in the last couple of months is a little alarming.

The Thing: The game is quite fun, but the rulebook is a mess. Some rules also seem exploitable.

Foundations of Rome: This is pure gaming excess and I love it. This is an intro level game with production values that would make a CMON dungeon crawler weep. It plays in about 45mins-hour, is simple to teach, looks great on the table and sets up and picks up fast.


My Fathers Work: Looks great, requires an app to play which hasn’t been released yet so I haven’t gotten it to the table. Early impressions from people who have been playing with an outdated web version seem to love it though.

Turris: Fun enough, rulebook is bad.

Feed the Kraken: Secret Hitler but more of a game? Good at high player counts.

Perseverance: Castaway Chronicles: I’ve played this one twice, once at three players and once at four. I think it plays a little long at four but really enjoyed it at three. I still need to try Episode 2.

[hepcat]

I’m still trying to find the fun in Castaways. Although we only played the first one so far. It did not go down well.

[Lordnine]

You mean Perseverance? I think it is a little deceptive because the way to win is to do the opposite of what the theme tells you. You want the dinosaurs to attack. The game is largely about positioning so that the dinos attack exactly when you are prepared to deal with them. That can mean taking the occasional action that feels sub optimal just to trigger the attacks while you have a majority of troops in the area.

Also, replace the neutral dice with your own as soon as possible. Not only does this hurt your opponents but it provides a huge bonus for area scoring at the end of rounds without you having to directly do anything.

[hepcat]

Whoops, yeah. Perseverance.

Strategies weren’t our issue. It was that we just saw no reason to whip this out instead of Anachrony. There’s nothing in the first game at least that made us want to play again. The whole leader mechanic was just annoyingly fiddly, and the die faces just seemed like a tacked on mechanic. Whereas in Anachrony, the workers thematically feel different.

However, I do want to try the second game someday. That may alleviate some of my many issues with the first game.

[Lordnine]

That’s interesting. The leader mechanic is basically just area control, do you have the most stuff in a section of the board? Then you get a reward. Have the 2nd most stuff? Congrats you get a lesser reward. To be fair, I do think Mindclash Games overstuffs all their games and leans towards an everything but the kitchen sink approach to design.

I played Anachrony once and while I didn’t think it was bad, it just felt needlessly complicated for its main mechanic, which was basically taking out loans from the bank. My group has never felt the desire to go back to it.

[hepcat]

Sorry, wrong word. I meant officer tiles. They’re ridiculously convoluted when scoring them.

Anachrony I love. It seems complex at first, but it’s a basic worker placement at heart. The bank loan portion of it (the time travel mechanic) is overly hyped, in my opinion. It rarely gets used much in our games. And even then, it’s really not the core of the game. It’s more like a small side thing to get a few extra resources and maybe fulfill some victory conditions.

[AWS260]

The next Mindclash kickstarter.



It looks quite good. And more approachable than your typical Mindclash.

[Smoove_B]

CMON launched their Cyberpunk 2077 KS a few hours ago and it hasn't funded yet.



Pledge is $110 with an estimate to charge $50-60 for shipping to the lower 48.

Should be interesting to watch. It'll fund (only asking $100K) but I'm guessing it's not going to look like a typical CMON project.

[Blackhawk]

It already seems to be much more... restrained in its offerings.

[$iljanus]

CMON launched their Cyberpunk 2077 KS a few hours ago and it hasn't funded yet.



Pledge is $110 with an estimate to charge $50-60 for shipping to the lower 48.

Should be interesting to watch. It'll fund (only asking $100K) but I'm guessing it's not going to look like a typical CMON project.

So there’s a solo AI that they mentioned which caught my eye. I really enjoyed Cyberpunk 2077 the video game but board games based on popular video games don’t interest me as much. And with that shipping price I think I’ll just do a third run through as a Night City street punk on my PS5.

If someone was running a RPG group in the Cyberpunk universe though I’d play that. Perhaps in a nursing home someday.

[hepcat]

Just got the first two boxes for Vengeance: Roll and Fight. It’s like street masters but with dry erase markers and dice placement. I’ve yet to play, but it sure does look fun.

[Smoove_B]

Mine is coming Thursday. I really wanted to like the board game this is based on, but it was over produced - bucket of miniatures that served no purpose. This seemed like a much better implementation of the idea in like a 10th of the space.

[hepcat]

Any game that includes a mechanic based on a montage from an action film is off to a good start.

The only thing that may make it problematic is that when playing with others, it all comes down to how fast you can snatch the dice from the table as it’s all simultaneous.

I got it because Turczi’s name is on it, basically.

[AWS260]

I got it because Turczi’s name is on it, basically.

Feels like his name is on every other game these days.

[hepcat]

He's got a little cottage business going with solo AIs. He's become the go to guy for that.

[EzeKieL]

Game is very enjoyable for sure but yeah, I think I would only play it solo because of the grabbing mechanic.

I got several videos on my channel about it:

Reboxing

Spoiler:

How to Play

Spoiler:

(2x) Solo Playthrough

Spoiler:

[hepcat]

Excellent, thak you Ezekiel!