Tabletop Keith Burgun is one of those designers who, when they announce a new project, I listen. The designer of 100 Rogues and Auro: A Monster Bumping Adventure deserves at least that much. He excels at making turn-based strategy games in which every move needs to be calculated and meticulously thought out. What’s not to love? His latest idea is a card game called Dragon Bridge and, unlike his previous games, this one isn’t digital.
PC/Mac While I’ve seen them in action at gaming events, I’ve never had the pleasure of sitting down and actually playing one of the ‘Block Games’ from Columbia. First of all, they look complicated. Secondly, tabletop war games tend to not be my go-to game type, and, most importantly, no one’s asked me to sit in and play. This will all change soon, as there’s a Kickstarter currently running to bring these games to PC/Mac. The first game on the list is Richard III and, best of all, it’s already funded.
Tabletop Earlier this year I fell in love with an unassuming little solo board game called Black Sonata. You can read all about it right over here. Just a spectacular solo game that combines tight decision-making with mechanisms that obfuscate the underlying math, ensuring you never feel like you’re simply solving a puzzle. Yesterday, publisher Side Room Games decided to go at it again. Leaving the Elizabethan era behind, their latest focuses on World War II espionage in a little title called Maquis.
PC/Mac Lorenzo il Magnifico is a heavier euro set in Renaissance Italy that is pretty much exactly like every other euro published in the last 4-5 years. By this I mean that it’s sitting in shrink wrap on my basement shelf surrounded by a bunch of other games I have yet to find time to play. Publisher Cranio Creations is here to help, bringing its tableau builder to digital via everyone’s favorite crowdfunding source, Kickstarter.
PC/Mac • I was going to post about this last week, but realized that if there’s one board game company that doesn’t need a lot of help promoting their Kickstarters, it’s Cool Mini or Not. Their Kickstarters usually end up in the millions-of-dollars range, so an early preview of said Kickstarter campaign by us didn’t feel necessary. Today, however, that Kickstarter is live–and already funded a mere half hour–so it seemed like a good time to bring it to your attention. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, the viking-themed, area control gem, Blood Rage, from Eric Lang is coming to digital next year.
Tabletop • As someone who’s spent much of their life in Wisconsin, I’ve been taught to react with revulsion to anything that comes from south of the border, the Wisconsin/Illinois border, to be exact. It’s just not cool to show any appreciation for Cubs, Bulls, or even the pristine, toll-funded freeways that turn into potholed monstrosities as you meander north. Now, having a wife that lived for many years in Chicago (and living there myself for a period) has made me a tad more appreciative of what other Wisconsonites call FIBs. It’s with this more accepting eye that I peered at a new board game on Kickstarter set in the City of Big Shoulders called, appropriately, City of the Big Shoulders. It looks and sounds like Automobile and Arkwright had a baby, and I’m more than okay with that.
Here’s a collision of interesting things. Remote Games are the blokes behind Isotopium: Chernobyl, and the premise is pure magic. Players control wheeled drones and remotely roll around a scale model of the infamous reactor and nearby town, searching for energy caches and seeking out new locations. Slivers of escape room meets Joe Haldeman’s Forever Peace. It’s currently in Kickstarterdom. And you can play a timed demo right now. Go on.
iOS Universal, Android, PC/Mac • While I used to talk quite a bit about iOS war game gem, Carrier Battles for Guadalcanal, over at another site I used to write for, our coverage here at SP has been shamefully light. I apologize not only to the one-man development team of Cyril Jarnot, but to you as well. CB4G is a pretty great hex-and-counter war game for iOS (the only one I can think of) and we’re the kind of audience that should be eating it up. With a little (or a lot–that’s a big $ number) luck, CB4G will be a little less niche than it currently is. A Kickstarter started today to not only bring CB4G to other platforms–namely, PC/Mac–but also adding a ton of functionality making “the little war game that could” into the sprawling epic war game that Cyril envisioned from the beginning.
The hardest part of traveling is trying to get back into a normal routine once you get home. I’ve been home since last Saturday afternoon and still don’t quite have the usual rhythms down. For example, this morning I nodded off while trying to write this story and the small catnap turned into a 3 hour tour of dreamtown. The worst part: I still feel tired as hell. Anyway, sorry for the lack of content the last couple days. My malaise and confusion mixed with a huge job interview I had yesterday have made it hard to get back on the SP horse. We’re going to keep trying, however, and today’s attempt concerns RPG masters Spiderweb Software. They have an entirely new RPG world they’re itching to create, and have taken off for Kickstarter to get it done.
Tabletop, PC/Mac/Linux • There’s something very cool happening over at Victory Point Games. For years they were known as a company that made interesting games with components that weren’t very interesting, but not anymore. Over the past 2-3 years they’ve started to reprint second and third editions of games and upping their component game. Thus, we’ve seen gems such as Nemo’s War, Dawn of the Zeds, Healthy Heart Hospital, and Darkest Night all reappear with shiny new versions, begging for gamers who had poo-pooed VPG in the past to love them. It’s not hard to do, they’re all fantastic. The latest reimagining is another title I hadn’t heard of called Gem Rush. Not only is the shiny new 2nd edition currently on Kickstarter, but they’ve also announced that a digital version is on its way to Steam for PC/Mac/Linux.