Michael Groll’s Games has just released Operation: Dandelion through The Game Crafter for $39.99. Described as a light-weight cooperative game for 1 – 4 players, the game has everyone trying to get rid of weeds and help a bountiful harvest survive.

Operation: Dandelion plays ages 12+ in under 30 minutes.

The pictures up on The Game Crafter have definitely peaked my interest in this one, even if the theme really doesn’t hit home with me.

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A brand new saloon has opened up in town, and everyone is in line to try and get in. That’s right, Deadline Saloon is a game about waiting in line. Currently for sale on The Game Crafter by Namake’s Games, Deadline Saloon has you trying to get the most characters into the saloon by the end of the game. Players must employ clever card use to bump their characters up in line while impeding the other players’ characters from doing so.

The rules to the game fit on 2 pages and aren’t hard at all the grasp. It’s for 2-5 players ages 12+, and plays from 30-60 minutes. As with most Game Crafter games, you’re going to pay a bit more. Deadline Saloon is priced at $29.99.

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Hex Survival is a tactical  battle game by La Boite Games. The goal is simple, be the last one standing. Set in Moffee’s world, there’s even a cute comic to go with it. The rules are pretty easy to understand, and the whole game is supposed to play in less than 25 minutes. Check out the awesome “How to Play” video below (note: this is a physical board game, not a video game.)

You can snag Hex Survival from The Game Crafter for $29.99.

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Inspired by the success of crowdfunding campaigns for board games, the prototyping and print-on-demand service, The Game Crafter, is launching a new feature its calling “crowd sales”. A game in a crowd sale is sold at a discount but the amount of that discount depends on the total number of copies sold over a one-week period. For example, the first crowd sale (which starts Monday), has Song Froggy at a minimum discount of 25 percent ($5.00 off its normal price of $20), increasing to 33 percent when 100 copies are sold, and 40 percent with 175 copies.

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Using Pelgrane Press’ Gumshoe system for a time-travel roleplaying game, TimeWatch is supposed to be rules-light, provide fast cinematic action, and facilitate improvisational GMing. Lead designer Kevin Kulp also promises that the game will “embrace using paradox and time-travel to your advantage when solving mysteries and battling foes; leave yourself a note from the future, or have your future self clock in to lend a hand when you need it the most.” At the ambitious stretch goal of $1 billion, he also promises to fund an actual time machine.

With Village in a Box, The Game Crafter is “experimenting” at Kickstarter. The company says it’s about building an economy of scale. For an $89 pledge, backers can get eight different games, each one of which has sold or will sell for around $20 on The Game Crafter’s website. However, I’m not convinced. There are nine pledge levels that bundle different combinations of the eight games, and add-on options further increase the number of permutations. When divided among the eight games, the project’s goal of only $1,500 doesn’t strike me as enough to guarantee scale for any one. Thus, I see it as more of a marketing device. Nevertheless, if you’re interested in any of the games and willing to pay up front, The Game Crafter is offering a pretty good discount and as a POD company should be able to deliver in a reasonable time frame.

Mora Games, who also plans to use The Game Crafter for Flip, may have a bigger problem. The game looks quite similar, as well as similarly named, to Flip Out from Gamewright.

Shoshana Kessock is raising funds to support the Living Games Conference at New York University. The conference is about LARPs and Shoshana, who’s running the conference as her graduate student thesis, would like to record its events for future scholarly reference.

Also in the LARP category is Sabertron. The project from Level Up aims to produce foam swords with built-in electronics that can record hits and differentiate them parried strikes.

Fat Dragon Games’ Ravenfell project is for the production of print-and-assemble 28 mm miniature terrain files. Fat Dragon promises a whole village’s worth of buildings that can be folded flat and reassembled, customized with add-on elements, and mixed-and-matched level by level. The thing is, I can’t find any indication of how many model plans the company considers a village’s worth. And while the project has hit a number of stretch goals, only the higher priced donors qualify for the extra rewards attached to them.

Query is a party game based on the auto-complete function of internet search engines. Each round players try to guess which phrase are a true search engine result and which are alternatives submitted by fellow players.

In Livestock Uprising, Dog Might Games looks to be producing a resource-driven war game, gimmicked up with farm animals as factions. For $250, backers can get “From Seed to Harvest”, a 70 page book of “articles, workshops, design tips, drawings, and artwork” about the game, and a hand-made, hardwood game box.

On Indiegogo, Noel and Tye are asking for funds to help them make a Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine costume. [Waiting for the C&D…]

On Ulule, Narrativiste Edition is seeking funds for a French translation of Evil Hat’s Spirit of the Century RPG.

Tasty Minstrel Games’ latest pay-what-you-want project is a western-themed, tile-laying game. This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the 2-4 of Us is worth $3 for the name alone.

Tasty Minstrel Games’ Scoville project stands out for doing a fantastic job of teaching the basics of the game in a 3 minute video. Actual play looks pretty good too. The game is about farming hot peppers, which are represented by wood cubes of various colors. The board represents a shared field for planting peppers, which when harvested peppers can be sold in the market (for various benefits) or used in the making of chili recipes (for victory points). Cross-breeding specialty peppers draws on the color wheel as a mechanism in the game.

Another project that does a good job of introducing game play in its short video is Nika from Eagle Games. Though applied to an ancient Greece theme, Nika is an abstract title where the goal is to move one’s pieces to the other side of the board. The twist—let’s say in comparison to a traditional game like Chess—is that while the pieces are all the same, their relative strength depends on how groups are configured and aligned together—in game terms, the size and shape of a phalanx.

I don’t think that Queen Games is really depending on Kickstarter success to print Tortuga, a game about pirates stealing treasure from each other that’ll come with a bunch of custom dice. But then again, I don’t think that it’s backers really care.

Modiphius Entertainment proposes to bring back the Mutant Chronicles roleplaying game in a 3rd edition with new rules. And it looks like the company is already well underway with an extensive playtesting program and has detailed plans for a full line of supplements. By the way, I have no idea what “dieselpunk sci-fi” means.

Silver Fox is producing a line of Call of Cthulhu 32 mm miniatures.

UPDATED 1/4/2014

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The Zap! Game is supposed to be a family game that combines “strategy, chance, and skill.” The game involves racing across the board while interfering with the advancement of other players’ pieces, which makes me think of Chinese checkers. But the ad copy doesn’t really explain. Something also about a hand of Zap cards, whatever they are.

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