Tony Go has a reissue of Deep Space D-6, which has packaging reminiscent of a Choose Your Own Adventure book, which is really what grabbed my attention. This is a slightly revised edition of a single-player game kickstarted a few years back, where you roll crew dice to assign them to stations on board your spaceship to complete a mission… in spaaaaace! “Slightly revised” as in “we’re reprinting the whole thing and adding a new mini expansion”. Check out the original campaign for details, then go and support the reissue campaign. A $20 pledge gets you a copy of the game in December.

If you asked me who the top three Cthulhu RPG developers are, Graham Walmsley is on that short list. Graham is bringing Cthulhu Dark to print. He describes it as a “tabletop roleplaying game of cosmic horror, with stripped-back rules that drive a bleak and terrifying story”, Cthulhu Dark is a 200 page book that focuses on the mystery and the bleak horror of Lovecraft’s work. The majority of the book is done, except final editing and layout, so the PDF will be available just after the campaign ends. Physical copies are estimated in December and can be yours for as little as GBP32 (roughly 41 USD).

Texas Hold’em with ZOMBIES. Because sure, why not?  A physical copy of the game in November is a reward for a $25 pledge.

unPresidented: Bigger and Better is a board game where an easily manipulated president of an unnamed country has just been elected and you’re trying to push your agenda by getting him to pass the policies you want. Get the buffoon to pass more of your policies than your fellow party members’ without having the approval rating of the figurehead dropping too low, and you win! While there isn’t much detail on how the game plays, it looks like there was some actual thought put into this game, unlike the dozens of other Trump-themed game-like objects that have appeared on Kickstarter over the past year. (Note: don’t confuse this with Unpresidented Biggerer and Betterer, which doesn’t look as good.)  55 Canadian bucks (about 41 USD or 32 GBP [see Cthulhu Dark]), gets you a copy in November.

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Iello’s latest is Sea of Clouds ($30, now), a set collecting card game in which the players are sky pirates gathering treasures, artifacts, and rum. They can also pick up pirate cards, which help them in combat against their neighbors. To collect the cards, players go through a type of draft, each on their turn looking at a stack and then deciding whether to keep it or add another card at random from the draw pile and move on to the next.

Shipping to retail later this month are Schotten Totten ($15) and Oceanos ($40). The former is a reprint of a well-known Reiner Knizia title (also published as Battle Line) but is new to Iello. The latter was designed by Antoine Bauza and has players collecting animals and treasures from the ocean in submarines that they can upgrade with better propellers, periscopes, fish tanks, and other features.

Looking further out, Iello has planned for September Aladdin & the Magic Lamp ($25), the next in its Tales & Games series. Game-play for this 20 minute, 2-5 player title incorporates set collection and secret action selection.

October will see release of Around the World in 80 Days in a beautiful gilt slip-case. I didn’t catch much about game-play, other than it’s for 2-6 players and takes about 45 minutes.

Then in November, Iello delivers The Mysterious Forest, a cooperative memory game based on the Wormworld Saga web comic.

And sometime later comes Farm Friends, an expansion for Happy Pigs with blocky cows, sheep, and chickens; Bunny Kingdom, a card drafting, area control game by Richard Garfield; and a Cthulhu Monster Pack for King of Tokyo.

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I don’t know how I missed this, but I just saw an entry pop up on BoardGameGeek for Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu. The game is being released by Z-Man games and uses familiar Pandemic rules with a Cthulhu Mythos flair.

There’s not much info I can find. A post by W. Eric Martin indicates an official announcement from Z-Man on the 15th of this month, with a debut of the game at Gen Con this year.

How many versions of Pandemic is too many to own? I have the original printing, am looking at getting Legacy, and now am going to have to snag this when it comes out.

It looks way too cool to pass up.

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UberStax is a universal game accessory that can be used as a holder for cards, tiles, tokens and other game components. Its racks and supporting elements fit together in extra-wide, multi-level, or other configurations as appropriate to the game or desired by the user. UberStax are meant not just as a convenience for the general gamer but also as a support for those with manual dexterity issues.

Hawke Robinson is a registered recreational therapist who’s run both adapted and non-adapted roleplaying games for people with Autism, Cerebral Palsy, and a variety of special needs, as well as for at-risk children. So far, he’s been limited to providing these therapeutic services—which he does without charge—to the area of Spokane, Washington. He’d like, however, to take his game on the road and so is turning to the public for help with funding a wheelchair-friendly RPG trailer—basically a game room on wheels.

The Networks is a card-drafting game where the goal of players is to assemble the best lineup of television shows and attract the most viewers. Shows, stars, time slots, genres, demographics, and advertisers all must be managed and considered. The shows themselves even age over time, forcing players to continually develop new shows to keep viewers tuning in. Despite these various elements, The Networks is supposed to be a light-to-moderate game with a healthy dose of satirical humor.

Latice is beautiful and its gameplay simple. Place a tile adjacent to another tile with which it shares a color or shape. Place it next to two or more tiles with shared color or shape to earn special moves such as repositioning an already placed tile.

A Hindu board game out of Croatia, Catch Krishna in Vrindavan aims to encapsulate the Bhakti devotion. One player takes on the role of Krishna, the others become the gopis chasing him around a map of the ancient city.

Under a banner of “cultists have kids too,” Toy Vault is seeking funds for Recall of Cthulhu, a Lovecraftian memory-matching game. The basic game is straightforward—turn over two matching tiles—but the advanced game adds a layer of moderate complexity. For example, some tiles are worth more than others, matching is no longer 1-to-1, and certain tiles trigger special actions, like a bonus turn-over.

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Today, Pelgrane Press announced a huge sale on the Cthulhu Mythos collection. From today until June 16, you can get 75 percent off of the entire set at Bundle of Holding.

The Cthulhu Mythos is based on Pelgrane Press’s Gumshoe system. Players use clues at hand to figure out how to solve the mystery.

The four items in the starter collection, Trail of Cthulhu rulebook, Stunning Eldritch Tales, Keepers Resource Book and Screen, and Four Shadows MP3 retail for $43, but they are available at Bundle of Holding for only $9.95. Plus, if you pay more than the threshold price of $23.05, you can get six additional supplements, including The Armitage Files, Bookhounds of London, The Book of The Smoke, Arkham Detective Tales, Rough Magicks, and Hideous Creatures: Shoggoth, which retail for $68. That’s a total of $111 worth of materials for only $23.

Ten percent of the money from purchases made during the Bundle of Holding sale will go to Cancer Research UK. You have until June 16 to buy. Purchases will automatically be added to your DriveThruRPG library.

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The Cthulhu-head dice tower looks amazing but I won’t be held responsible for what happens should you actually bring it to the table or, worse yet, feed it dice.

Lone Shark’s The Apocrypha Adventure Card Game has a modern horror theme but is built off the system that Mike Selinker developed for the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game. Also differentiating it from its predecessor is character development. Rather than with check-boxes, players add cards to their character decks as they reveal their character’s repressed memories.

Requiem Vampire Knight is a game for which I published a detailed preview when it originally sought funding on Indiegogo 2 years ago. Now on Kickstarter, the game I’m told plays pretty much the same, though with a thoroughly-edited rule book and an upgrade to plastic miniatures. As a I said then, the game does have some interesting mechanics but it’s the dark theme and artwork that’s particularly striking.

On a lighter, cuter note there’s JunKing, a card game about scavenger imps who hoard garbage. Pulling the “Crown” from the junkpile (a.k.a., the draw pile) ends the game and is a major point boost, but holding the “Perfectly Good Sandwich” (“Someone threw this away?”) is a strong consolation prize.

BattleBards is a background-audio system for tabletop games. Audio tracks and a soundboard from the same company already exist for PC and MAC. This project is for creating a web-based soundboard, producing additional audio, and recording a series of voice-overs covering standard fantasy adventure encounters (such as the barmaid in the tavern that the PCs always visit).

From the creators of Driking Quest comes Haiku Warrior, a card-based roleplaying game told via haiku. “Fight monsters, find souls, eat fruit.” I think maybe they played with their first product a little too much.

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