Kickstarter Collision May 2014

What makes a board game a board game? Is it dice, cards, a board? I ask because our final Kickstarter project to highlight to you good folks this month has all these things but isn’t played on a tabletop (unless you lay your iPad down flat upon it). It’s a video game that takes everything we associate with playing on the table top and adding those extra layers that that video games give the opportunity to add.

You may notice we’re a bit thin on interesting looking projects this month. So if there’s a game you think we should feature let us know in the comments below. Anyway I digress, let’s just recap on last month’s projects before we go headlong into this month’s.

• Heavy Steam is still going and is still short of its $55,000 gaol
• Mercs Recon made stupid money, over $800,000 for the miniatures game of extremely hostile corporate takeovers.
• Coup Reformation smashed its goal raising $254,000 and they only asked for $10,000
• Tracker sneaked past the finish line, braking its $12,000 goal by only $400
• Although not as big a success as Mercs, Aetherium was the second miniatures game to reach its goal, raising $29,000, $9,000 over its goal.

Dragon Slayer

The biggest draws for me on Kickstarter are the low cost simple games. Its partly due to me being risk averse, its partly due to shipping costs to the UK are usually far too bloody much, but mainly its because game designers are doing some really interesting things with such simple concepts.

Dragon Slayer is one such simple, yet intriguing dice game, from Indie Boards and Cards (them of The Resistance fame) and David Mortimer, a notable print and play game designer. In Dragon Slayer you will choose which dragon to attempt to fight, selecting their dice, you then score points based on whether you can chop off the tail, wings or head. There are four dragons to choose from each one being a different difficulty but the more difficult dragons gaining you the most points. After defeating one dragon you can push on and try and defeat the other three. So far, it’s a reasonably standard push your luck, dice game. However, after defeating a dragon your opponents get the chance to challenge, you forcing you to either push on or loose points for declining the challenge.

It’s a simple concept but helps increase the player interaction in a genre that usually has none. Dragon Slayer is looking for $5,000 and is already well past its goal.

In Security

Sticking with dice based mini games is In Security. Set in the world of hacking and dodgy looking security agents, In Security has players attempting to hack and not share their stolen secrets from the other players.

Just like Dragon Slayer, this game adds multiplayer elements to the traditional dice rolling, push your luck element. The clever twist here is that you either have to utilise the dice your opponents have discarded or spend your precious secrets to reset the dice.

It really is a simple game, and comes in at the bargain price of only £6! If you’re too tight to pay that then you can also make the print and player version that won the BoardGameGeek “Dice or No Dice” design contest.

In Security is looking for a measly £250! That’s around the same as some of the standard pledges in those ridiculously bloated miniatures games.

Armello

Armello isn’t you’re traditional board game. It may have a hex based board, dice and card mechanics but where Armello differs, in that it isn’t a physical board game but is digital only.

The aim of the game is to oust the king that has been corrupted by dark powers, or to end the game with the most prestige. You do this by controlling lands, evading taps and fighting enemies with your giant anthropomorphic creature. The art style is absolutely beautiful and there’s a huge amount of animation and weather effects to make it look even more interesting.

Armello is looking for $200,000 AUD, and is coming to a variety of tablet and desktop platforms but I want to see this as a physical board.