Debuting their crowdfunding campaigns live at the Internationale Spieltage game fair in Essen, Germany, the top 5 finalists for Hasbro’s Spring 2016 Next Great Game Challenge are ready for your pledges! The games, with their Indiegogo links, are as follows:

• Colossal Blob – a family card game where players collect growth cards to become the biggest, baddest blob.
• Lair – a customizable, fantasy adventure game; Players travel through their opponent’s dungeon in hopes of defeating the evil Dark Lord.
• The Plot Thickens – a collaborative, storytelling game where players create an intertwining tale.
• Plank & Rank – a two-player game where players must build a bridge, plank-by-plank, while simultaneously moving their army, rank-by-rank, to the opposite side.
• On the Slopes – a skiing-themed family-style board game where players race around a mountain to be the first to visit every lodge.

Each game has 25 days left and range from fully-funded to barely-funded.

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Hasbro has launched its third game design challenge, this time with a focus on family games and a celebrity judge, Daymond John, founder of FUBU and one of the investors on the television show, Shark Tank. Interesting choice considering how poorly board game pitches usually do on such shows.

In any case, again, five finalists chosen by Hasbro will pitch their designs to the public with crowdfunding campaigns on Indiegogo. And again the ultimate winner will receive $25,000 and a trip to Hasbro headquarters.

The first challenge focused on party games and picked The Mister Toast Card Game as the winner. The second, which asked for games that would also be of interest to game enthusiasts, awarded Hex Casters the top prize. This time, the Family Face-to-Face Game Challenge will judge submissions on the following criteria:

• 34%: Gameplay for All (cross-generational gameplay that’s easy to get and easy to get into)
• 33%: Theme (excellent content, narrative, and conceptual visuals to match)
• 33%: Viability and Potential for Success (ability to be created and delivered to gamers, potential to appeal to all levels of players, likelihood to be the next hit game)

Entries are due by October 23rd.

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After last year’s challenge, which saw 500 party game proposals and plans for Hasbro to publish The Mister Toast Card Game, the company follows up this year with a search for “games that are enjoyable for families and casual gamers that are also exciting for long-time enthusiasts.” Hasbro Gaming Lab’s 2016 Next Great Game Challenge ramps up the reward too, offering a prize to the winner of $25,000 in addition to the trip to Hasbro headquarters.

Submissions to the challenge—including game rules and a photograph—are due by May 15th. From these, Hasbro will choose 15 semi-finalists to submit full prototypes and then five finalists to pitch their projects to the public with crowdfunding campaigns on Indiegogo. Each of the finalists will receive $2,000 and mentoring support from Hasbro and Indiegogo but the grand prize winner will be chosen by a separate panel of judges in early December.

Entries this time will be welcome from the U.S., U.K., Canada (excluding Quebec), France, and Germany.

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In role-playing games there’s something about a contemporary or near-future setting that has grabbed me over the past few years. “It’s our world, but different.” Now, there’s an Urban Fantasy setting for the Savage Worlds game system up on IndieGoGo with an interesting twist: the Greek Gods and Titans do battle in a game that seems part Jason Bourne, part Shadowrun. Olympus Inc. is a licensed Savage Worlds product with reward tiers beginning at $15. Pop on over to their IndieGoGo page and download a sample chapter.

More roleplaying goodness! With just a few days to go, Infinitas DM looks like everything I wanted a roleplaying game app to be. It’s a tabletop game platform somewhat similar to Roll20, plus intergrated campaign management. Right now, Atom Switch Inc. is coming down to the wire: just over $4000 left to make their modest funding goal. A pledge of $5 (five bucks?) gets you the finished app, hopefully at the end of the year. (Honestly, I think they underpriced their pledge tiers.)

Ghostbusters: The Board Game II? What? Didn’t the Ghostbusters board game just get released? Anyway, if you liked that and have $125 to blow on a Ghostbusters board game based on the not-so-great movie Ghostbusters II, um. Go ahead, ’cause apparently nearly 3000 people liked Ghostbusters II enough to pony up the cash, so yeah, it’s funded already.

Speaking of the 80’s, It’s The Goonies Adventure Card Game! In this game by Albino Dragon, you’re just a bunch’a rag-tag kids trying to find the treasure of legendary pirate One-Eyed Willy while evading the Fratelli criminal — you know what, it’s The Goonies. Just get it already. It’s funded nearly five times over which is even more amazing than the time you ate your weight in Godfather’s pizza, right?

This week in Popular Card Game Coattail Riding/Parody/Marketplace Confusion, our Cards Against Humanity winner is Cards Against Technology, where a Canadian (!) ran out of Cards Against Humanity cards so he made his own. “Imagine playing Cards Against Humanity, but with unlimited possibilities to choose from making the game almost different every time, and funnier, and less boring as time passes depending on who you play with.” Typos and Arial instead of Helvetica on these cards. Plenty of ® and ™ symbols in the text so these guys don’t get sued. Only $273 of $1500 CAD pledged.  Runner-up: Deck a Celebrity, where the judge pulls out a topic card (“AIDS!” she cries out.) and players have eight quotes from celebrities to best match the topic. (“If he invited you out, he’s got to pay.” -Beyonce was the winning card. Tee-hee.) It’s more Apples to Apples than CAH. They’ve pulled in $2,462 in pledges, but they wanted $15k. Nice KS intro video and better card design, though.

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Hasbro Gaming Lab has selected the five finalists in its search for the next big face-to-face party game. More than 500 entries were submitted to the competition launched in August and the chosen games, now soliciting funds on Indiegogo, are:

Warning! Signs—Which has players coming up with funny explanations for difficult-to-interpret pictographs.

Irresponsibility: The Mr. Toast Card Game—In which players get points by playing cards that allow Mr. Toast to have fun but lose points when others play cards that burden Mr. Toast with typical life responsibilities.

Hexes!!—An action game for adults. That means for example, play a particular card on someone and force them to sing everything they want to say or be out of the game.

Sunk!—Which combines an action game with a physics/dexterity thing. Players on their turns pour drops of water in to a floating cup and hope it doesn’t sink.

Touchy Feely—Also an action game but played in the dark. Cards with action challenges (like standing on one’s head) are passed around while the lights are still on. Then someone flips the switch and everyone has to complete their actions in a way they’ll be able to prove when the lights come back.

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The “core part of the team” of Conquistador’s The Best Damn Gaming Coins Ever! campaign are back with a new metal-coins-for-games accessory they’re calling “The Best Damn Gaming Coins Ever! Two”. Included in this campaign are seven new coin sets, plus the original campaign’s thirteen sets: Chinese, Mongol, Perisan, Indian, Anglo-Saxon, and more. Already funded, if they hit the $30k mark, they will have paper (cardstock) bills with “famous women of history”. Also on the campaign page, a suggested pairing of sets and board games: Fresco with the Renaissance coin set? Don’t mind if I do! Five bucks gets you a handful of coins, twenty-five gets you an entire set of 78 coins, and fifty dollars for the deluxe collection of 117 coins.

Two weeks ago, I mentioned Will Hindmarch’s Patreon. Nathan D. Paoletta, Will’s co-host of the Design Games Podcast, also has a Patreon for people that wish to support his ongoing game design process. Nathan has developed indie roleplaying games like Annalise, carry, World Wide Wrestling, and more. “It’s part design journal, part Patron-participation, and part early bird access to all of my published work.” Suggested patronage levels begin at $1 per month.

I can’t count the number of times I found out about a crowdfunding campaign too late. Thankfully, IndieGoGo has an interesting feature called InDemand: campaign creators can opt to have a successful campaign extend past the campaign’s end. If you’re like me and miss a campaign’s funding period, you can still jump in on a successful campaign after that campaign has ended. Here’s two playing card decks that have ended but are still offering perks to backers.

How many male scientists can you name? How many female scientists — besides Marie Curie and Ada Lovelace — can you name? Any? Women in Science is a card game featuring 44 female scientists. Doubling as a standard playing card deck, the game itself features scientists, engineers, and astronauts with mini-biographies. It’s a simple rummy-like game with players creating labs (“melds”). $20 gets you a copy of the game.

EduStack Playing Cards for Math and Astronomy sounds like a very dry title for an extremely dull educational project disguising itself as a game, but no — these playing cards are really nice. There’s a deck about some math concepts for $10, but what really caught my eye was the Star Stack, a deck about constellations for $12. Bump that up to $42, and you get a lovely book with stories about the constellations (and scientific facts), a poster star map of the northern and southern hemisphere, and a sticker featuring the design on the card backs. Shipping to non-India locations is $8.

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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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Or should I say crowdsourcing. Well, it’s probably more accurate to call it a combination of the two. Let me explain…

As Hasbro tries to engage more with fans, the company is turning to the public to find the next great party game. The effort is being led by a group in the company called “Hasbro Gaming Lab”.

Hasbro Gaming Lab is a team of passionate and game enthusiasts and designers, whose mission is to discover and develop great new games, connect with the growing gaming community, and bring fresh experiences to gamers everywhere.

Specifically, Hasbro is inviting the public to submit ideas for face-to-face party games. The folks at Hasbro Gaming Lab will select their five favorite, based on the following criteria:

40%: Gameplay (are there well considered rules, balanced mechanics, limited (if any) digital involvement)

20%: Story/theme (abide by a narrative to give dimension to the concept)

20%: Potential for Fun-ness (It should have the potential to bring people together, instigate laughter, or create good times)

20%: Viability (50 foot game boards sound awesome… but it’s unlikely they can be made into a game)

Then to choose the best from among those five, Hasbro is enlisting the help of Indiegogo. All five will be asked to launch their games as projects on the crowdfunding website. When the campaigns are finished, Hasbro judges will choose a single winner, again based on the above criteria—not necessarily the highest funding. The winning project gets a bonus $10,000 direct from Hasbro, as well as free consultation and mentoring sessions at Hasbro’s offices in Providence, Rhode Island (travel expenses paid for a team of three).

Here’s the real amazing thing. Participants, even the winners, retain all rights to their game! Hasbro only requires a right-of-first-refusal. That is, should the winner find a third-party publisher interested in acquiring the game, Hasbro will have the right to meet or exceed the offer.

The deadline for submitting initial ideas on the Hasbro Gaming Lab website is September 30th. Good luck!

[via Entrepreneur]

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Do you play Fantasy Flight Games’ X-Wing or Armada? The creators behind the Magnetic War Mats campaign on Kickstarter do, and they’re printing 36″ square and 36″ x 72″ magnetic rubber game mats to keep ships steadier on the playing field. The products that would be funded in this campaign can be ordered with or without printing; mats without printing can be placed under other company’s printed mats (such as Wings of Glory/War) to help prevent your ships from slipping during play. All of the currently-proposed prints are space scenes. Each set comes with either 20 or 40 neodymium magnets to attach to ships “completely flush with the bottom of [the X-Wing type] game base”. Mats begin at $20 unprinted, $40 for printed (with carrying travel case).

Tasty Minstrel Games is halfway through a campaign for two Eminent Domain-based products. Battlecruisers is a standalone game in the ED setting; Exotica is the second expansion to Eminent Domain. Already funded (over $70k as of this writing), TMG has added several stretch goals to the project. The base game was one of the first boardgame Kickstarter campaigns, launched in 2010, and is one of TMG’s flagpole games. Eminent Domain: Battlecruisers & Exotica‘s Kickstarter campaign ends on July 1st.

Meanwhile on IndieGoGo, there’s a papercraft car racing game called Papecarz. With a throwback 60’s design and plenty of Good Girl Art, Papecarz comes with track, stands, and six cars, all pre-cut and pre-creased. All you need is glue to assemble. Funding levels include a $29 for the game tier (with modern-day NASCAR-like cars), $10 more for six additional “vintage” race cars, and slightly higher tiers for custom car designs. This IndieGoGo campaign will only be funded if it hits the $5000 mark on July 14th.

Over on Patreon, Kaitlynn Peavler is creating stock illustrations. Her goal is to have weekly releases available to use by all patrons, with diverse characters “of many different ethnicities, genders, body types, and ages.” A $1 pledge gets you access to the images while a $10 pledge (limited slots) will let you suggest illustrations.

Lowell Francis is covering the history of roleplaying games, looking at a genre of games (like superhero, post-apocalyptic, and others) in a certain time period, describing how they fit into the culture of the time, and then listing games (with reviews, where possible) from that period. As an example, “History of Superhero RPGs (Part Four: 1993-1996)” beings with a personal look at the era and a review of the state of the comics industry at the time, followed by twelve different entries for the four-year period. Suggested pledge levels start at fifty cents.

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Two of the three promos for Plaid Hat Games’ Dead of Winter are available for individual purchase. The Kodiak Colby survivor promo, originally only available by ordering the game from the Plaid Hat Games website, and the Felicia Day survivor promo, previously available only as part of Geek & Sundry’s International Tabletop Day package, are on sale for $5.95. Both promos come with a Crossroads card, Survivor card, and survivor standee piece. The Felicia Day promo went into high demand following International Tabletop Day (April 11, 2015), with sellers on eBay selling the item for up to sixty dollars.

There is no word on if the Lucky Luke Smith promo, developed for Watch It Played‘s 2014 IndieGoGo funding campaign, will be released for sale.

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