Here’s a quick roundup of a few great-looking games on Kickstarter now! Note that these are games I haven’t gotten to play for myself yet, but they’re mostly from publishers and designers that I’ve enjoyed in the past.
New to Kickstarter? Check out our crowdfunding primer.
Lion Dancers from Hot Banana Games
Hot Banana Games has published a couple of games that incorporate Asian culture: Steam Up was about ordering dim sum and featured the animals of the zodiac as characters; Moon Bunny celebrates Mid-Autumn Festival, with bunnies on the moon collecting ingredients for the magical elixir (and mooncakes!). Now they’ve got a Lunar New Year game: Lion Dancers, which has the lions moving around on the stage, collecting items. I haven’t gotten to try this one yet, but I like the way that Hot Banana Games includes little details about each game’s inspiration in the rulebooks, so that you can learn what all the various items are and how they’re traditionally used.
The Daily Weather from Button Shy Games
Button Shy Games is best known for their library of wallet games—usually with only 18 cards in a little vinyl wallet—that are ultra-portable and can be played just about anywhere. I’ve got a pretty big collection of them and they have a surprisingly wide range of game types and play styles, including a lot of solo games. The Daily Weather is a little solo puzzle game that’s meant to be played once a day: each day you need to fit the cards together so that the current date is visible as well as a particular background pattern, and then you score bonus points for meeting certain conditions. There’s a print-and-play preview that you can try out, and if you’re the sort of person who loves sharing the results of your daily puzzles, they’ve got a Discord channel for that, too!
3 Trick-Taking Games from Portland Game Collective
I’d hoped I would have a chance to preview the expansion to TRICKTAKERs ahead of time, but right now I’m just backing this project for my own copy. I first got to try the TRICKTAKERs base game last year at a local game store event, and immediately bought a copy: it’s a trick-taking game where each player picks a different character, who has their own rules about how they score and sometimes their own special cards that can be played. (I mentioned it in this piece.) The Portland Game Collective has a number of small-box games, most of them trick-taking games, and this campaign includes three different titles. I don’t know a whole lot about Best of Neapolitan and Zoom Zoom Vroom, but if you like wacky trick-taking games you should definitely check out this campaign.
Almighty: The Godliest God Game from Keen Bean Studio
If you want a silly game about playing god, this one’s for you. Play as the Sun, Love, Storm, or Death, as you influence the puny mortals to earn their belief and gain glory. This makes me think of the old videogame Populous that came out when I was a kid. And for an extra challenge, you can also give the mortals “free will,” where they’ll do some stuff on their own—that turns the game into a solo or cooperative game. I haven’t played this one, but I did enjoy Keen Bean Studio’s previous title Power Vacuum, a trick-taking game about household appliances and … treason?
Lodge from PickPocket Games
Build a cozy lodge, invite guests, and add amenities in this puzzly tile game. Designer Peter McPherson is also the designer of Tiny Towns, which was one of our Game of the Year Finalists for 2019, as well as Fit to Print, a finalist in 2023. So I know he’s very good at spatial puzzle games, and I’m curious to see what sorts of tricks Lodge has up its sleeves.
Dicedangle II from The BoardGame Zone
Okay, this one’s a bit steep for me, but I just came across it and thought it was worth sharing. It’s a tiny metallic dice set that fits into a little cylinder that you can wear as a necklace or use as a keychain. Want to make sure you always have a full polyhedral dice set with you? Here’s a pretty fabulous way to do it. Though if you’re my age, you may need to keep your reading glasses handy too.
