It’s time for another Kickstarter tabletop roundup! Here are several ongoing projects that have caught my eye—but I won’t have the opportunity to review them myself. (In other words: hey, publishers! We love reviewing Kickstarter games, so hit us up beforehand next time!)
New to Kickstarter? Check out our crowdfunding primer, and visit our Kickstarter curated page for more projects we love.
This tile-laying game set in the Roman Empire is from designer Hisashi Hayashi, who’s had a couple of other recent Kickstarter successes with Yokohama and Isaribi. Build the most prosperous city using military and cultural locations—but be sure to have living quarters, too, because no city will function without any residents.
Groves is from Letiman Games, which has also published Dino Dude Ranch and Gadgeteers (both reviewed here). This one has worker placement, bag-building, and tile-laying, and looks like it’s targeting a slightly older age group than Letiman’s previous titles. The artwork is lovely. Designer Steven Aramini also designed Yardmaster, which was a hit with my group when it was released a few years ago.
This one also has some tile-laying as you explore the prehistoric world, but it also has an interesting dice-pushing mechanic: dice placement, but you slide previous dice over and add the new one, and then your action’s strength is determined by the new combination of results.
Helionox was originally funded in 2015 (I hadn’t heard of it at the time) and is back on Kickstarter for a deluxe edition that includes a new expansion. It’s deck-building with a board, and includes options for solo play, cooperative play, and competitive play. I’m intrigued!
I first came across Echnida Shuffle at my local GameStorm convention years ago—designer Kris Gould had an oversized version of the game using rubber hedgehogs and I tried it out. It’s a pick-up-and-deliver game that is complicated by the fact that the echidnas go around and around in circles and you have to get them out of the way to get your echidna to the right spot. I hadn’t played it more recently but was pleased to see it’s on Kickstarter now. Silly and cute, but may be great for your little gamers!
And here’s an accessory for those of you who like fancy dice: SnapDice, developed by Mark Baker of BackerKit, is a set of steel dice paired with wooden dice trays that have rare earth magnets embedded in a stripe near the back of the tray. Toss the dice in, and they “snap” into place. There are several wood types to choose from, and you can get six-sided or polyhedral dice as well.
And speaking of fancy dice, the Tablebreaker is a d20 that comes in three sizes, up to 116mm. Enough said.
