This month brings real time fun (five minutes to save the earth from meteors!) and interesting components (a deck of cards printed on dice) as well as great artwork and mechanics. It’s a strong month for Kickstarter games, with unique ideas and a lot of independent publishers.
Meteor (Mayday Games) – Meteors are hurtling to earth! Join the Meteor Defense Coalition in working together to save the planet. Meteor is a real-time game with a play time of five minutes. Players build projects, launch rockets and develop technology, in an effort to stop the destruction of the world. Rockets attack the meteors, while technology will often give players a useful benefit. However, players cannot talk to each other, making cooperation even harder.
Lanterns: The Harvest Festival (Foxtrot Games) – Each time you place a tile, every player receives a lantern card corresponding to the color facing them on the tile. Players must place tiles carefully to award themselves the most helpful color of lantern while being careful not to give an opponent the cards they need. You make sets and pairs of lanterns to score points and win the game.
9-Shooter Quick Draw (Square Shooters) – The winner of the Square Shooters game design contest. The game features Square Shooters, a full deck of cards printed on 9 dice. Play as gunslingers facing off in a shootout in this real time game where you roll dice and play action cards as fast as you can to try to be the first to successfully create the poker hand listed on your gunslinger card and shoot your opponent.
Cartography (Jon Adams) – This game builds on the concept of the classic game Go. However, in Cartography, players build the map tile by tile, laying pieces to claim a constantly changing environment that has walls that can defend or capture territories. The tiles are a unique triangle shape, and the map-building element ensures that the game will be different every time you play.
Dragon's Ransom (Tau Leader Games) – Protect your dungeon from being overrun by rampaging heroes, in this solo/co-op game for 1 to 2 players. Build chains of minions to attack heroes, prepare against planned hero attacks and use traps to slow the intruders down. Players win the game if they defeat the four heroes, and lose if they run out of cards and one hero still remains alive.
Mint Tin Games (David Miller) – This campaign is for two microgames, each of which comes in a conveniently sized tin box. Mint Tin Pirates is about two pirate captains crossing paths and less than happy to see each other. Players fight on the high seas where the pirate ghost will give you one last chance at victory. In Mint Tin Aliens, players take on the role of alien students arriving on earth to complete summer projects and compete to see who is the best as you control minds, abduct, and earn extra credit.
Spell Stealers (Greg Santo Games) – Play as a master thief attempting to steal a spell hidden in an ancient temple. It's a press-your-luck dice game where players roll dice to try to obtain artifacts. After successfully stealing an artifact you must choose whether to risk the points you have just earned by trying for another artifact, or ending your turn. Once you have ended your turn you may move deeper into the temple, equal to the number of points you have just obtained from the artifacts. However there's a small window of opportunity in which other players can also attempt to steal your artifacts, so you have to move quickly.
ZtoZ (Peter Newland) – A survival party game in which players are surrounded by zombies. Players attempt to survive by impersonating zombies and must read a card while keeping eye contact with another player. If either player laughs or smiles, the zombies know they’re a phony, eat them and they will then join the horde. As a zombie you can make zombie noises and roam around, trying to get other players to laugh. The last remaining human player wins the game.
Full disclosure: unless otherwise noted, we have not seen or played any of the above games. Our assessment of each is based on the information given on the crowdfunding project page.
