Star Requiem: Humanity’s Last Stand, a print-and-play solitare game designed by Steve Hawkins, has just entered the beta phase of its development. Basically this means that all the rules have been ironed out, but some balancing issue and art need to be tweaked before it’s officially done.

It’s a sci-fi game that looks to have a good amount of depth to it. While the files for the game aren’t yet available, they should be coming soon. There’s a document showing the first few turns of play here, so keep your eyes on the BGG page for more info.

Steve has kept a fantastic designer diary of his progress making the game, which I suggest you take a look at.

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Geek Chic, makers of drool-worthy gamer furniture, appeared on ABC’s Shark Tank this past Friday. Founder, Robert Gifford, walked away with a $300,000 investment from shark, Robert Herjavec, in return for 25 percent of the company.

Gifford revealed during the show that Geek Chic did $2 million in business during 2012 but was in the red by $100,000.

From comments made by Herjavec, you can expect him to push the company to raise its prices.

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Sergey Karjakin of Russia was the top finisher in the Norway Chess championship Saturday. Karjakin placed ahead of both Viswanathan Anand and Magnus Carlsen, who are scheduled to compete for the world championship later this year. Carlsen finished second, Anand sixth. However, when the two faced each other earlier in the tournament, the result was a draw. Karjakin’s prize for the win was €100,000.

In St. Louis this weekend, Gata Kamsky won the U.S. Championship, taking home a prize of $30,000, while Irina Krush won the U.S. Women’s Championship, with a prize of $18,000.

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Cursed is a beautiful game, and now having played it, I can confirm the quality of its components. The question is, can I confirm the quality of its play?

The short answer. Yes!

Cursed is a light bluffing game where every turn one player takes the role of a monster and tries to siphon as much life from the other players, villagers, as they can. Can the monster kill all the villagers? Will the villagers kill the monster? It all comes down to die rolls and how well you can bluff.

Play starts with the villagers each rolling their die, and the monster secretly rolling as many dice as all the villagers rolled. All the players can now play a card that can beef up their total, or have some special effect on the game. The monster then wagers a certain amount of life tokens, and the villagers have to match that. Wagering can go on as long as the monster keeps adding tokens, or either the villagers or the monster things to pot is too big and runs. After that, the monster totals up his rolls and card, and the villagers do the same. If the players win, the tokens the monster waged are tossed into the void. If the player wins, the monster takes all the tokens they wagered.

Now all the players can buy more cards for 1 life token per card. Play continues with the next player becoming the monster and the other players the villagers.

The game is quick, at times tense, and a whole lot of fun. I got the whole family involved with this one, and everyone had a great time becoming the monster and laughing maniacally when they won a battle. There was even more celebration when the villagers triumphed, and got to dump the monster’s tokens into the void cup.

There’s nothing deep here, and the game relies heavily on the players’ ability to bluff. With the right crowd this game is an overall winner, and I look forward to breaking this out at future game nights.

Cursed was provided free for review by World Wide Chaos Incorporated

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New in the line of Army vs. Aliens dice games is Robots vs. Dinosaurs. Coming out in June, RvD is compatible with both Army vs. Aliens and Pirates vs. Ninjas.

While I’ve never played AvA, I have bought it as a gifts for kids’ birthdays before. Guess I’ll have to see what all the fuss is about.

For a MSRP of $15.99 you get a bunch of dice and 2 closeable dice cups for easy travel.

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Bronwyn B is looking to make and sell some Meeple Soap! Before she does, though, she’s made a quick survey she’d like people to take. You can find the survey here, and it’s pretty quick and painless.

I love geeky soap, so I’m pretty excited to see things like this. From the looks of the questions on the survey, there’s going to be a good amount of colors and packages to choose from. That, and the soaps will most likely be all natural, hopefully organic.

Hopefully these are available soon. Who doesn’t want to rub meeples all over their body, right?

Right?

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The rules of Roll for It! are pretty simple. On your turn, roll your six dice and try to match the patterns on the three face-up cards. Keep any cards you match completely and score the points indicated. You can also leave on a card any dice that partially match. Thus on your next turn you’ll roll fewer dice but already be part of the way to a match.

Whenever anyone claims a card with dice waiting on it, the dice go back to their owner. And at the beginning of your turn, you do have the choice of reclaiming all your dice from the cards on which you previously left them.

The game is won by being the first player to 40 points.

Roll For It! isn’t a game of any deep strategy, more of a quick, social game—lots of dice-rolling, mostly luck, a little decision-making. Also some yelling when someone else grabs that 15-pointer you’ve been eying for three rounds!

If you’d like to get in on the Kickstarter, move quickly. The project closes Sunday evening. For $15, you’ll get a single copy for 2-4 players. For $30, two copies, which allows for play with up to eight.

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After a lot of requests, Rebel Minis has released a boxed set of 3 spiders good for both 15mm and 28mm games. The MSRP for this set is $24.85, which is a savings of around $5 if you were to buy them each separately.

The cool thing about these bugs? The legs are flexible, so they can be bent and posed.

Rebel Minis will be releasing different kinds of bugs soon.

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On Monday, Hasbro filed a lawsuit to prevent the production of a competing Dungeons & Dragons movie [PDF]. The suit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California against Sweetpea Entertainment. Sweetpea, represented by Courtney Solomon, is working with Warner Bros. on the D&D film.

The suit acknowledges that TSR (the original publisher of D&D) licensed Sweetpea to produce a movie, as well as sequels and television series. However, it claims that the 1994 contract and 1998 amendments declared that the movie rights and television rights would, independently, revert to TSR should 5 years pass without a new production after the first.

The first D&D production was a 2000 theatrical release, the second and third aired on the Sci-Fi/Syfy television channel in 2005 and 2012, respectively.

[via Hollywood Reporter]

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After a HIGHLY successful Kickstarter, Fate Core will be hitting the shelves in July. Fate Core provides rules for just about any story you can imagine, and has been tried-and-true tested and complied into this entirely new version of the Fate System.

Everything from character creation to game mechanics has been streamlined and made so the story comes first.

The book is 320 pages, and will have a MSRP of $25, which is a fantastic deal compared to some other RPG core books.

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