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.

• Comments Off on Crowdfunding Highlights

Number 1 in this week’s Highlights isn’t a game. I’m not even sure the campaign is thinking about games rather than just toys. But it’s a cause worthy of our support. And that cause is #ToyLikeMe, an effort to have better representation of people with disabilities in children’s toys. The #ToyLikeMe campaign has already brought Playmobil around to the idea of producing figures with disabilities. And just today, Lego revealed a minifigure in a wheelchair. To help keep the campaign growing, though, its organizers are asking for £16,000 to develop a professional website and associated resources. Drop a little in the hat, will you?

Crowdfunding campaign number 2 this week is for a card game version of Manhattan Project, Minion Games’ title about developing and building nuclear weapons. I love the original and Manhattan Project: Chain Reaction looks to be a great translation. Of course all elements of the game—workers, resources, buildings, etc.—are now represented by cards. A more interesting difference, however, lies in the fact that at the end of each turn, a player has to discard every factory, every university, everything that’s not a resource or a bomb. This means that the industrial engines that players chain together will now constantly need to be refreshed.

Thief’s Market from Tasty Minstrel Games is about dividing and spending loot. The loot is represented by dice, which the players take turns either selecting from the center or grabbing from one of their fellow thieves. Then when the dice are all split up, they can be spent on finery, useful items, or henchmen, each of which confers some later benefit. At the end, the thief with the most notoriety wins. That is campaign number 3.

Number 4 is Fabulous Beasts. This one, at first, looks like a typical stacking game. Three-dimensional animal figures are placed on top of each other until something gives and everything falls. But that’s not actually the whole deal. Fabulous Beasts also integrates a sensor platform, such that as the animals are stacked a unique virtual world and story unfolds in a linked tablet app.

Finally, at number 5 is Olympus Inc, an urban fantasy setting book for the Savage Worlds roleplaying game. Olympus Inc is the story of a magical war between Titans and Olympians taking place in, but hidden from, modern society. With Olympians developing their power through corporate intrigue and the magical war hidden from the perception of ordinary people, Olympus Inc has a distinct cyberpunk element as well.

• Comments Off on Crowdfunding Highlights