Dungeon Heroes calls itself your “lunch break dungeon crawl.” It’s a clever little two-player dungeon crawl, with one player as the Dungeon Master and one as the set of four heroes. The heroes are trying to get three treasures, and the DM is trying to kill them off before they do. I may have a longer review of this coming up soon, but in the meantime you can check out the Kickstarter page for more details. The DM places randomly-selected tiles throughout the dungeon, and the heroes (represented by a d10, d8, d6, and d4) attempt to disarm traps and kill monsters to get to the hidden treasures. It’s an inexpensive, quick-playing game that would be great for a quick lunch break game — I just hope they put it in a small package to keep it portable, too.
I’ll admit, I haven’t actually played Salmon Run yet or even delved really deeply into the rules, but after hearing about it on the Dice Hate Me podcast a couple times I was really intrigued. It’s a deck-building game, but it also has a modular board representing the river, and it’s about salmon swimming upstream to spawn. How can you say no to that? Published by Gryphon and Eagle Games, you know the component quality will be outstanding, and they’re closing in on their $20k stretch goal for a 5th player expansion — but this campaign is ending soon, so if you’re interested you should take a look soon.
I reviewed Castle Dice earlier this month but they’re not quite at their goal yet with less than two weeks left, so I wanted to give it another push. It’s a worker-placement, dice-drafting game with really fun artwork and some interesting mechanics. The downside is it’s a little pricey, but it’s chock full of dice, which kind of makes up for that. Here’s my review.
Okay, one last project and I’m done for today:
What is that, you ask? Why, it’s the Build Your Own Laser Cutter. I know, I know, you’re saying something like “Wait a minute, what does a laser cutter have to do with board games?” Well, for one thing, a laser cutter is pretty darn handy if you’re making board game prototypes. I spent a good chunk of cash at my local maker space to get a bunch of hexes cut out for my game prototype — I could do it by hand with a matte cutter, but it takes a lot longer and isn’t nearly as precise. Granted, I didn’t spend $1,500 on it, but if I had my own laser cutter you can bet I’d be cutting and engraving all sorts of other things.
Also the BYOLC is just way cool. Jim Kelly, one of the GeekDads, is involved with the project as well, and I know from his other posts that he’s a serious maker. I’m still on my way to claiming that maker merit badge, and a laser cutter would certainly push me a bit closer. I’ve got just under a month to save up … You’re all gonna come back my board game when it’s done, right?
