Saturday, November 26, 2016

Obligatory 2016 Kickstarter Post Part I: Honorable Mentions

Alright, on to my next series! We’re going to move on to my 2016 Kickstarter list. This post will be the first in this three part series where I’ll feature the Kickstarter boardgame projects that I am currently anticipating. These are all games that haven’t been shipped out to the backers, at least not at the time of writing this post. This means they may still be going on, or maybe they haven’t started yet, or maybe they just ended, or maybe they ended two years ago and still haven’t shipped! Regardless, they are all campaigns that I’m very excited about and some of them I’ve even backed already! This first post in the series will look at 5 honorable mentions (and some others that just missed the list to look out for!) and the next two will look at games 6-10 on the list and then games 1-5 on the list. Well, enough housekeeping, let’s move on to the list!

The first honorable mention that makes it onto my list is Mines of Ōlnäk. This game is designed by Jonathan Frenay and Raphaël Helaers and will be distributed by Morning Players after the completed Kickstarter. This is a worker placement, economic game with some area control added in and it looks very interesting. The game finds players taking on a clan of dwarves who are coming together in order to dig up and rebuild their lost city under the mountain. Players will place their workers in places to exploit the city’s resources, participating in projects, sell resources and claim political rights. The thing that really caught my eye is the absolute beauty of this game. It seriously looks beautiful from all of the pictures that I’ve seen coming out of different conventions as they are demoing the game before the campaign begins. I hope this game plays even half as good as it looks because that means it will be a winner!



The next game to hit my honorable mention list is Massive Darkness. This game is designed by Raphaël Guiton, Jean-Baptiste Lullien, and Nicolas Raoult and is being distributed and published by Cool Mini Or Not (CMON) and will be coming out in 2017 after a highly successful Kickstarter run. This game is a co-operative dungeon crawler in a fantasy world that takes the Zombicide system and gives it a new twist. In this game you’ll take your fantasy hero and go through these dungeons in a similar style of Zombicide but you will be able to level up your characters throughout a campaign style of quest. These monsters will be spawning in the dungeon and have the opportunity to drop really cool weapons that they are also able to use themselves to power up their stats. I also really like that they have a darkness element where if you are in a dark spot then you can sneak attack the monsters and get more dice to roll in order to take them out. I think this is going to take a fun game in Zombicide and make it more entertaining with the added elements.



The third game to make in on to my honorable mention list is Vengeance. This game is designed by Gordon Calleja and will be distributed by Mighty Boards after their successful Kickstarter run. This game came out of nowhere for me. I had never heard of it and it wasn’t on my radar at all until I saw the Rahdo video during the campaign. This game plays out just like a vengeance movie along the lines of Kill Bill or Django Unchained. It is a heavy dice rolling game where the players will take their hero and go up against different clans and leaders who have caused them harm in some way. It is interesting where there are distinct different turns where you play out a montage and then the fight scenes. In the montage the players will heal, gain items and abilities, and generally upgrade their hero for the fight that will come next. During the fight scenes the hero will go against a specific clan/leader during their turn in order to exact their bloody revenge for the ills cause upon them. The players then score points after they take out these clans. I absolutely love the theme and think this game may be a winner; however, the price tag was very high so we’ll see if it comes down in the future. If this happens there is a good chance I’ll pick it up!



The next game to hit the list and just miss my most anticipated honorable mention is Tiny Epic Quest. This game is designed by Scott Almes and will be distributed by Gamelyn Games next year. The Kickstarter is still current but will be ending very soon. I haven’t actually backed this one yet but even if I don’t back it I will end up buying it in retail. This game has the players taking on the roll of adventurers questing in order to rid the land of a group of goblins who are flooding out of a portal and ravaging the land. There is a heavy push-your-luck element to the game as you are placing the adventurers in specific quests and then rolling dice during a night phase to see what happens. I love the modular board setup and the bright colors along with the interesting game mechanisms. Gamelyn Games always does a great job with their Kickstarter campaigns and this doesn’t seem to be any different. I look forward to this one and hope to have it in my collection by this time next year.



This final game to hit my honorable mention list and just miss my top 10 anticipated Kickstarters is The 7th Continent. This game is designed by Ludovic Roudy and Bruno Sautter and will be distributed by Serious Poulp. This game was a huge hit during its campaign on Kickstarter and thus hit all of the stretch goals they added for it. It is a co-operative, exploration and adventure game with tile-laying elements. The game looks very cool and the tiles/cards that you lay down have some very good art. You will travel around and craft tools and weapons in order to survive in any way that you’re able to. This game takes quite a long time to finish and because of this they created a clever save feature so that you can stop the game and come back at a later time in order to play again. I think the game looks very cool and I would really like to see it in action.



Other Kickstarters of note:
- Aeon’s End (Action Phase Games/Indie Boards & Cards)
- Anachrony (Mindclash Games)
- Apocrypha Adventure Card Game (Lone Shark Games)
- Campaign Trail (Cosmic Wombat Games)
- Card Fusion Chaos (Level 99 Games)
- Dragon Keepers (Knight Works, LLC)


- Fate of the Elder Gods (Greater Than Games/Fabled Nexus)
- Fire of Eidolon (Magic Meeple Games)
- Foe Hunters (Spellforge Games)
- Haven (Red Raven Games)
- Heroes of Land, Air & Sea (Gamelyn Games)
- Key to the City: London (R&D Games/Game Salute)


- Keyper (R&D Games)
- Millennium Blades: Set Rotation (Level 99 Games)
- Peak Oil (2Tomatoes)
- Quests of Valeria (Daily Magic Games)
- Sagrada (Floodgate Games)
- Sentinels of the Multiverse: OblivAeon (Greater Than Games/Sentinel Comics)


- Shadows of Brimstone: Forbidden Fortress (Flying Frog Productions)
- Shadowscape (NSKN Games)
- Too Many Bones (Chip Theory Games)
- Tramways (AV Studio Games)
- Valeria: Card Kingdoms: Flames & Frost (Daily Magic Games)
- Villages of Valeria (Daily Magic Games)


Wow…so many games coming out from Kickstarter that actually look interesting! Because of the change in the environment of crowd funding, so many different publishers are trying out Kickstarter which means more games are getting out there. This also means there are some real stinkers out there but it also makes the ones that are good much more viable than in previous years! I’m okay with the way Kickstarter is working for games right now since I do a ton of research before I back anything. I know all about the game, designer(s), and publisher before I ever hit the back button. These are just my honorable mentions (as well as some others that look interesting) so make sure you come back soon as I’ll be starting my top 10 with games 6-10. Thanks so much for reading and we’ll catch ya next post! Until next time, game on!

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