Interesting projects…

Seas of Iron is a game of fighting battleships. Each player takes charge of a ship, assigns crew to individual sections, and chooses where to fire his guns. While not a particularly deep game, it does use images of real historical battleships.

Yushino is a variant on the idea of mathematical Scrabble. Instead of constructing equations, players lay tiles using a fixed mathematical series: add the previous two numbers and take the final digit to get the next number.

Our friends at The Spiel are producing Scopa, the traditional Italian card game, but with the standard suits replaced by modern gamer symbols: dice, cards, dominoes, and meeples.

From Happyshops in Germany, 21 Mutinies is a pirate-themed board game where each turn one player acts as captain and chooses an action for everyone. Crew who disagree, however, always have the option to mutiny.

Star Bowl figureStar Bowl, on Indiegogo out of Spain, is a fantasy football (American football) miniatures game, where the figures look suspiciously like Star Wars characters.

Need just a little more help…

Eagle Games’ Dawn: Rise of the Occulites is a board game filled with miniatures of strange but cute alien creatures.

With TABLE (the Tabletop and Boardgame Learning Expo), the Roll2Play game store in Coppell, Texas is hoping to launch an event that introduces board games to a wide audience of non-gamers.

Expand Your Lab is an expansion for Mage Company’s abstract board game, Wrong Chemistry. It adds 66 new elements (configurations), 10 new scientists (special abilities), and other features.

Wrong Chemistry Expand Your Lab

Already funded but worth considering…

Ancient Terrible Things is a pulp-style horror game about exploring the jungle. Dice rolls in specific combinations are used to overcome encounters and unlock ancient secrets.

Jolly Roger Games is raising funds for a reprint of the board game, Kremlin.

The Lord of Catan is a dramatic short-film about tension that develops between a husband and wife when they plan Settlers of Catan.

Gaming Paper’s Megadungeon 2—Lost Catacombs project is for disposable paper battle maps, preprinted with geomorphic dungeon sections.

Shaintar: Legends Unleashed takes the high-fantasy campaign setting to the Heroic and Legendary ranks of the Savage Worlds RPG.

I’m skeptical…

Darkling Plain looks like a project built for stretch goals. It’s an augmented reality board game/miniatures game/RPG (depending on what part of the pitch you’re listening to). The technology looks cool enough but it has been done before. Also, I can’t tell what the AR will actually add to game play, or whether it will outweigh the downside of having to watch an electronic device while manipulating cards and pieces on the board. The project owners have promised to post an example-of-play video but have not done so yet. In fact, the pitch is mostly about the setting and the excitement of the developers. Nothing is said about gameplay. With 28 days left, Darkling Plain has raised $14,000 of an announced $120,000 goal.

Antimatter Matters is a beautiful, brightly colored board game about quantum mechanics. Unfortunately, from what I can tell by watching half the 16 minute how-to-play video, it’s basically roll-and-move with terminology based on particle physics and a little card play thrown in. $33,000 is being sought. $19,000 has been raised so far.

Too late…

Dominion Storage Case is probably the best option I’ve seen yet but if you haven’t already backed it, you’re too late. The project owner is trying to keep his initial production run small and has capped orders. I admire his restraint.

The skunk…

Get QRunk, a low-brow trivia drinking game, featuring cards with QR codes and a bleep-filled promotional video.