I was on vacation for much of July, so there were several tabletop Kickstarter campaigns that I won’t be able to review, but thought were worth a mention. Here are several campaigns that have caught my attention this past week. As we gear up for Gen Con (only 2 weeks away!), there are going to be plenty of campaigns launching just before or after the convention. Pace yourself!
Flash Point: Tragic Events Expansion
Flash Point: Fire Rescue is a great family-friendly cooperative game about being firefighters. I originally reviewed it back in 2011, and since then it has had several expansions, adding two-story houses, office buildings, miniature figurines, additional firefighter abilities, and more. The latest expansion, Tragic Events, adds three new specialists, plus events that work with the experienced rules to make each game feel even more different than the last.
Gameception
This game puts another layer on top of your game night: each player gets a couple cards that have secret goals on them. If somebody does the action shown on your card, you reveal it and score, drawing another card. The player with the most cards at the end of the game night wins! Now you can score points when somebody’s being an alpha player, or if they’re on their phone during the game, or your cat walks across the game board. It reminds me a little bit of Pretense by Button Shy Games, and is also similar to an idea I’ve had in my head for a while.
Crabs!
This card game from Daily Magic Games is about catching and selling crabs—it’s a tricky game of manipulating the cards you have and the cards in the pool to get the right crabs to sell. It’s a design originally published by a Taiwanese game publisher, and Daily Magic has updated the artwork and tweaked it slightly.
Shipwrecked
This bidding game is about acquiring the parts to repair your wrecked ship… but you have to get them back from the thieving monkeys. It’s being published by Elbowfish Games, which is local to Portland, so I may be able to get a prototype copy to try out soon—I know several of the people involved in this project, which is based on a design by Matt Kirby, the designer of Apples to Apples.
Kingdoms Lawn
If you like tabletop games but also like being outdoors and throwing things, this one might be for you. It’s a set of wooden blocks and balls—you set up kingdoms and then try to knock down the other player’s blocks. I think it could be particularly fun if the four kingdoms had unique abilities you could add, too.
Curious about the Kingdoms Lawn game – where was your brain headed with the comment on “unique abilities you could add”?
I think in terms of going for the tabletop crowd with an outdoor toy/game, they could probably have faction powers so that each kingdom can do something different. For instance, maybe one kingdom can throw two balls in a row; another could stand a piece back up once during the game; another can retrieve a ball if it knocks over a block during its throw. Not having played the game myself, I don’t know what powers would make the most sense and still be balanced, but I think there’d be room for some experimentation, and it would give each of the kingdoms a little more flavor to set them apart from each other.
They already have that – each kingdom has a different special ability. I haven’t played it either, but they say that in the video.
Oops! That’s what I get for spending more time reading Kickstarter pages than watching videos. 😀 I went back and found the rulebook, and there’s a section in the back with the Kingdom abilities. I had a good guess: one kingdom gets to stand pieces back up on the first round, one can throw multiple armies and castles on one turn, and one can retrieve castles that are thrown out of bound. Plus there are several more abilities, too. Pretty cool.
Ha ha – somehow I missed the video, too!