Casual Game Crowdfunding: Dinosaurs, Dragons, and Whales

In a World of Dinosaurs (Subtle Chuckle) – This game features a unique game design, using two boards which each feature the same island separated by several million years. On one board you play as herds of dinosaurs until the ice age hits and the dinosaurs become extinct. As the dinosaurs start to die their pieces are moved to the same location on the other board where you now take on the role of paleontologists who are attempting to excavate fossils. As you gather the fossils, you put together dinosaurs. There is a bonus for matching the fossils correctly but you can build whatever kind of bizarre dinosaur you want. After you’ve put the fossils together, you ship them back to your museum to attract visitors.

Dragonflame (Minion Games) – Players take on the role of dragons in this 30-minute card game. Each turn players fill up castles with loot cards as well as with nasty curses and knights. Players then take turns attacking the castles. The castle you choose determines your turn order in the next round. At the end of the game the cards you collected from the castles are scored, all except for the dragonflame cards which are used throughout the game to attack villages, which will hopefully win you points at the end of the game. There are free print-and-play files currently being offered, so you can try the game out for yourself.

Black Hat (Timo Multamäki) – Compete to be the best hacker and hack systems in this game which combines a card game and a board game with a trick taking mechanic. Players take tricks to advance on the board and attempt to put themselves in advantageous positions. Your position on the board alters your strategies and the player who reaches the end first won’t necessarily be the winner. Black hat cards turn good cards into useless ones and also heavily alter strategies and game plans. The game offers replayability with a modular game board.

New Bedford (Dice Hate Me Games) – Players want to grow the town of New Bedford into a thriving whaling community. Over 12 rounds you gather resources such as wood, food or brick, build ships or launch them, or choose to construct buildings. Every round there’s a whaling phase during which whales are drawn from a bag at random. There are multiple species of whales ranging from common to rarer ones which offer more victory points at the end of the game but cost more to process. The more whaling that occurs during the game, however, the harder it is to find whales in the ocean, reflecting the real history of New Bedford.

Dumpster Brawl (SolarFlare Games) – Players choose various animal characters to play as they fight for the right to dive into the dumpster (and each other's hands) with diced based combat. The object of the game is to collect three sets of three or more matching trash cards, and get rid of any extra cards that don't belong to the sets.

Twistocity (MassMiddleGames) – Players draw a tongue twister card and must read it aloud immediately. If they succeed they earn a point. After reading the tongue twister they draw a twist card (two twist cards if they successfully read the tongue twister). Twist cards include personas which you can play on anyone which makes the player read their tongue twister in a particular way, for example reading the twister as a Transylvanian vampire, a robot, or a teaser trailer voice. There are also action cards in the Twist deck which can either help you or be used against other players.

Pushee Pieces (Eric Daryl Stevenson) – Players take turns placing their pieces vertically or horizontally onto the squares of the board. The direction the piece is placed determines which adjacent pieces are pushed one square away. The more pieces placed on the board, the higher the chance that you'll cause chain reactions (since a placed piece moves adjacent pieces).