Already funded with 24 days left to go, Tim Fowers new game, Fugitive, is an intense game of cat and mouse for two players. I first got a chance to play a prototype of the game with Tim at PAX East. I played the fugitive while Tim played the marshall. It took only a few minutes to learn the rules, and try to make my way to victory without Tim catching me. I pulled it off, but only by around one turn. Tim was quickly figuring out my moves, and almost had me.

That’s the game in a nutshell. It takes about 10 minutes, and play different for both players. I took home the prototype and have since played it with my 10-year-old. As is usual in our home, he wins most of the time.

There’s already a great how-to video for the game:

Tim has a track record for excellent games, and Fugitive is another added to this list. $18 gets you the game once the campaign is over, and there’s really no reason not to snag it. Really, at this point, all that’s left is for the game to unlock all its stretch goals, the first four of which have already been done.

Seriously. Get it.

A prototype of Fugitive was provided free for this preview by Tim Fowers.

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HoloGrid: Monster Battle is a new augmented reality game currently being Kickstarter by HappyGiant and Phil Tippett. Phil is well known in the movie industry as a monster designer. He’s the one who created the famous Holochess scene in the original Star Wars.

HappyGiant sent me some demo cards to use, and early access to their demo app. I was a bit confused at first, but figured out the app is just to test the AR of the cards, and show off a teaser trailer in AR using one of the board cards. You can see me stumble through the demo below. Also, I made a mistake and said the game was up on YouTube in the start of the video. I meant Kickstarter.

There’s currently 4 days left in the campaign, and they have a bit to go before the game is funded. The tech is really cool, as you can see in the video, but I would have loved some hands-on gameplay to get a better feel of what the game will be like. I like what I’ve seen so far, so I’m hoping the game funds so I can dig a bit deeper into it.

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Are you a wrestling fan? Remember M.U.S.C.L.E Men? Super Pocket League Extreme Wrestling, designed by Ryan Cowler, may be for you.

Currently on Kickstarter, SuperP.L.E.X. is a wallet-style game with a minimal amount of cards that packs in a lot of gameplay. The base game only has 18 cards, 2 of which make up the wrestling ring. Players take control of a wrestler, and build a hand of wrestling moves to try and take down their opponent.

SuperP.L.E.X. plays like a game of Tug of War as each player tries to break through with their attacks and build their combos for more devastating effects. Counters can be made which reset the combo meter, and bonuses can be earned depending where in the ring you are. It’s fast, fun, and fully of 80’s wrestling nostalgia with it’s outlandish characters and insane power moves.

The campaign is almost over, and the game has been more than funded. $3 gets you the print and play, while $8 gets you the base game and stretch goals. The rewards just grow from there. $11 gets you the game with the tag-team bonus pack, and $30 gets you a deluxe version of the game with play mat and meeples.

My opinion? Stick with one of the wallet versions. They’re super portable, very durable, and a great way to take the game with you wherever you go. The quick nature and small footprint make it a perfect travel game.

An early release copy of SuperP.L.E.X. was provided free for preview by Button Shy Games.

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Oh, I love the illustrations in Space Race: The Card Game. Journey into the Cold War and the dawn of space exploration. A bit of role selection and card combinations await in a really interesting game engine for 2-4 players with a playtime of 30-60 minutes. There’s less than a week left and it’s already funded. A pledge of approximately $33 will get you a copy of Space Race.

Cyberpunk RPG + Powered by the Apocalypse? That’s my song. The Veil, already funded, is another Apocalypse World-based roleplaying game set in the near future. And oh, does it look so pretty. About $10 gets you the PDF, about $28 gets you a physical copy of the book, too.

Dice boxes: You can get the cheap-looking laser-cut ones that look like puzzle pieces on the edges, or you can plunk down a bit more to get something that looks well-crafted, like Steven Parker’s through his Elegant Dice Boxes campaign. $40 on up gets you a sweet box for storing your dice. (Look at those joins!) Stephen is running this to acquire additional equipment for his wood shop to expand the business.

Have you ever wanted to carry your board games around but oh no you’re a clumsy oaf? Well, now there are two — yes, two! — competing Kickstarter campaigns about game bags going on right now! The Gamefolio System lets you either pack games into a big bag ($99) or toss those pesky game boxes away and shove all your components into smaller bags that fit into the bigger bag ($155). The Game Canopy has a smaller bag for $87 or a bigger bag for $117. They all are interesting but a huge upgrade from ol’ reliable Frakta from IKEA ($3 and about $114 to $151 of games). The Game Canopy design looks really slick. (Psst: Guys, let me know if you want a product review.)

This week’s Marketplace Confusion/Parody/Coattail Riding spotlight is called Bad Apples, which shows that at least the people behind this 18-card “expansion” know where Cards Against Humanity originally came from. Yep, eighteen cards with a C$227 goal, which makes me think that even if they do get printed and sent, they won’t be the same quality as the original CAH cards. Fun: This is the second time they’re running this campaign after the printer increased their print quote (?); this second campaign has nearly the same funding goal and the same reward tier.

Q: What about last week’s Diabolical Kittens? Did that fund? A: Nope. Just C$282 of C$8,000 were pledged.

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I hesitated for a while to write up Tak. Given the few games I’ve played, I’ve clearly just scratched the surface. But then again, that’s what I already enjoy about the game. With such simple rules, there’s so much to explore. Tak is one of those abstract games that manages a lot of challenging play in a very uncomplicated package.

I’ve also never read the novel from which the game is derived, The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss. And yet, perhaps even more than the interesting game play, it’s the imagined history and culture of Tak that has me so engaged.

The game works like this… On your turn you either place a piece (called a “stone”) on an empty square—standing up or laying flat—or you move a single stack of stones already on the board in a straight line, dropping some from the bottom of the stack in every space along the way. Generally, you can’t place a stone on top of a standing stone, that is, unless you do so with the special capstone piece to flatten it. Winning is accomplished by connecting any two board edges with a contiguous line of flat stones, and that is called a “road”.

Tak players of antiquity played with hand-carved pieces of various shapes and sizes. Some were just wooden squares or rounded stones; some were intricately decorated. Standard colors, shapes, and sizes for the pieces vary from time to time and place to place. Travelers typically played 5×5, using simple wooden pieces and an improvised board (or no board at all). Court players typically played the larger 6×6 game. Capstones could be highly specialized, and Tak players often carry their own personalized capstone, even if they don’t carry a whole set.

…So the instructions go, interspersing rules with brief lessons on the game’s archaeology, etiquette, unique terminology, and varying styles of play—short but one of the most enjoyable board game rule books I’ve ever read.

Cheapass Games’ Kickstarter project for Tak has just 10 days to go but is already funded 10 times over. Backers have options for different stone sets, beautiful wood boards, and a book with more on the game’s fictional history.

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The Unknown Armies RPG kickstarter drags the classic urban occult game kicking and screaming into modernity and is already funded. (Disclamer: I’m doing the layout on the books.) The roleplaying game will be delivered in three hardcover books with a wraparound GM screen that doubles as a slipcase for the set. The project has already funded and there are three days left in the campaign. Get digital versions of all three books for $30, physical+PDF+epub books at $99.

Tak is a two-player strategy game from Patrick Rothfuss’ novel The Wise Man’s Fear, part of the Kingkiller Chronicles. In the book series, the game “is supposed to be my world’s version of Chess or Go or Mancala,” Rothfuss writes. James Ernest of Cheapass Games went off an developed a playable version of Tak, and “it was amazing.… It’s more elegant than chess. It’s more enjoyable than Go.” If you like scalable abstract strategy games, you can get a copy of Tak for as little as a $25 pledge.

Looking for whimsical artwork for your adventure or fantasy roleplaying game? Justin Nichol is currently funding Horde of Cuteness on IndieGoGo. His goal is to create a large enough art collect to illustrate a card game with this campaign, but he’s releasing the artwork in this campaign for free use. Check it out at his IndieGoGo page.

Evil Hat Productions is publishing The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game, where you take on Harry Dresden’s cases with a variety of heroic protagonists. A $10 pledge grants you access to digital preview of the game with $39 getting you a copy. Shipping is interesting in this campaign: the more money raised, the cheaper shipping becomes. Currently, shipping to the UK is $15, but as the campaign continues to grow, that could drop to as low as $5.

This week in Marketplace Confusion/Parody/Coattail Riding, our spotlight is on Diabolical Kittens, a game that is presented a lot like Exploding Kittens, except without the art and name recognition of The Oatmeal. $30 gets you one copy of the game. $60 gets you one copy of the game and a 36-card “booster” if the $15,000 stretch goal is reached. You can do the math on that one.

Q: Did last week’s Cards Against Humanity-knockoffs succeed? A: Oh, you sweet child, no. Deck A Celebrity wound up at $2,502 of $15k and Cards Against Technology Trademark Symbol only got $429 of their $1,500 goal. And that was Canadian dollars, too.

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Avoid the Void is a new game being Kickstarted by Geek Fever Games designed by Tim Mierzejewski. The game is a crazy sci-fi race to stay on the board, always avoiding the void and trying not to becoming a Void Beast.

I had a chance to sit and play the game, and had a blast with it. I always love a game where I can destroy half the board on the first turn. Each turn you’ll draw cards, play half your hand, rounding up, and the move. If at any point you run out of cards or can’t move, you’re out and become a Void Beast. Then you’ll draw a Void Beast card each time it’s your turn so you can wreak havoc on the players still in the game.

The rules are super simple, and the cards give you a lot of depth. They also produce some pretty crazy results.

The picture above is of the prototype for Avoid the Void, which was fully playable at the show. All those blue Void tiles? That was me, destroying the board on my first turn as I stated before. Through some lucky draws and card play, I came out the victor of this particular play.

The game is a lot of fun, especially when you’ve got a bunch of players at the table. A pledge of $5 will get you the print and play version of the game, while $25 will guarantee you a physical copy. There’s 16 days left in the campaign, so if it sounds like something you’d be interested then head over and help the campaign out!

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Game Salute launched a thematic dice Kickstarter campaign inspired by their Alien Frontiers game in March of 2013, eventually cancelling the entire project on April 18, 2016. The rocket-shaped dice campaign was funded in 3.5 hours. The campaign originally was designed to produce six-sided dice with pips in the player colors for Alien Frontiers, eventually expanded into 12 colors of dice covering the typical range of RPG polyhedrals, Fudge (Fate) compatible dice, and numbered six-sided dice.

Citing production difficulties with China-based Panda Game Manufacturing, the original manufacturer, and the cost of recreating molds with a new supplier, the company has cancelled the entire campaign promising a full refund for any products not yet delivered in the campaign. “After the multiple rounds of samples and revisions we had already attempted,” Game Salute writes, “we determined that we could not achieve the quality we would consider acceptable for mass production and delivery with a new supplier.” In June of 2015, the manufacturer cites “the intricate numbering that needs to be done on the RPG dice“, specifically the twenty-sided die as causing production difficulties.

Of the Rocket Dice that shipped, apparently the six-sided dice were shipped out but with significant changes. Dice are normally finished via tumbler polishing, but after 23 iterations, that method wouldn’t give good results. ABS plastic (the plastic that is used to create LEGO pieces) solved production issues, but required hot stamping. “Larger pips did not work with the hot stamping, so the smaller [pip size] was the final fix to all previous problems,” Game Salute wrote in March of 2015. However with the change in pip size, some backers were upset with the resulting dice. Game Salute offered a refund at that point to dissatisfied customers.

Backers of the now-cancelled campaign should request a refund at the “Contact Me” link on Game Salute’s bio page on Kickstarter.

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I know we usually do nice Crowdfunding Highlights, but this is a project that I’m overly excited about. I’m sure many Souls fans out there are too, seeing as the game is already a good amount past its funding goal.

Finally we have some details about the game, and I’m really digging the “fast setup, long reveal” that adds a level of exploration and tension to the game. Everything is looking really great, and I’m really looking forward to how much of the extras are unlocked. I’m hoping most, and it’s looking like that may be the case.

There’s only two pledge levels for the campaign: one for consumers, and one for retailers. They’re currently priced at around $113 and $283 respectively. With the game being funded already, you’re guaranteeing yourself a copy of the game. Also, you’ll get every last goodie that’s unlocked with either level, so the more the game makes the more you’re going to get.

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Ever wonder what it would be like to battle with monstrous, mutated goats? Wonder no more. Clash of the Battle Goats is up on Kickstarter, already funded, and awaiting your cold, hard cash. Compatiable with their previous goat battling game, Gruff, Studio Woe once again brings goats to the front lines in epic combat.

In Clash, each player takes control of a Shepard and 3 Gruffs, then fleshes out there deck with all sorts of power, items, etc… They then go back and forth planning out maneuvers to take out the other Shepard. The trick here is that while you set up your moves and attacks on your turn, the actual attack doesn’t resolve until the next turn. There’s a constant tug-of-war between players as they try to outdo damage done by the other player, while trying to come out on top and cause some damage. It’s nerve wracking, but a lot of fun.

I played Clash with my 10-year-old son, who’s already a seasoned CCG player, and he was as entertained away as I was. Of course he’s now asking for more cards. That’s a pretty good sign in my book.  We’re looking forward to the final copy of the game, and possibly picking up Gruff while we’re at it. Of course if you back the game on Kickstarter at the $75 level, you’ll get Clash, Gruff, and a bunch of other fancy things. Then again, if you just want to keep it simple, you can make sure you get your basic Clash set with a $20 pledge. That’s a seriously good deal.

A prototype copy of Clash of the Battle Goats was provided free for review by Studio Woe.

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