Board Game News -The Gateway Gazette – 14/07/2016

Greetings Gamers,

Everybody, put your smartphones away, or at least close that Pokemon Go app and pay attention. Welcome to The Gateway Gazette – Kickstarter Edition, as we cast our spotlight on more crowdfunding titles than usual. But before we show you all the shiny new things, let’s see what’s going on at CBQ this week.

Stuart dropped a review of Dark Moon earlier this week, and tomorrow Paul will be looking back at one of his favourite games of 2015, and see if his original praise still holds up.

New Games

After last year’s “Deluxe Version”, Power Grid is getting more love with the spawning of a card game version, which will be releasing in October this year.

“The players represent CEOs of mighty power companies producing electricity. During the game, the players bid for power plants at auctions and supply them with resources. Their income depends on the amount of electricity produced in each round. At the end of the game, the player who produces the most electricity wins the game. Power Grid: The Card Game offers all the tension and tactics well-known of its two big brothers Power Grid or Power Grid deluxe without using the different maps. You get the full Power Grid emotions in an intensive 60 minutes playing time!”

Kickstarter

The hype is real. Martians: A Story of Civilization from Red Imp Games was funded in roundabout 2 hours, with a goal of $30,000 (with it’s current pledge level of $110,000 it’s also almost completed all stretch goals too). But what is it?

“Cooperative/competition board game for 1-4 players. Survive in hostile environment, explore resources, expand your base, be the leader.”

That’s… minimal, but from this video it looks quite extensive as you build your colony on the red planet. The components look amazing, and I love how the board makes it look like a real-time strategy PC game.

The classic zombie film Evil Dead 2 is getting the cardboard treatment from Space Goat Productions.

“The officially licensed Evil Dead 2 Board Game is the tabletop experience Evil Dead 2 fans have been dying for–featuring at least 8 custom figures with art depicting the terrifying and iconic characters, monsters, and locales from the cult classic film. 2-6 players will work together in 60–90 minute sessions to gather pages of the Ex-Mortis while trying to survive demon attacks, supernatural events, and avoid turning into evil deadites themselves.”

This game, which is officially “certified groovy” has already reached its initial goal of $70K, but has plenty of stretch goals reaching up to 1 million dollars, which might be a tad optimistic but it is already past a quarter of the way, and there are 26 days to go still.

Temp Worker Assassins is a game in which you need to infiltrate your office, pilfer stationary, and plot devious ways of offing your co-workers. Much like real life then.

“Temp Worker Assassins is a fun, strategic and quick multi-player game. Each player takes turns placing assassins in a fantasy office with the aim to steal as much stationery and kill as many full-time employees as possible.”

No doubt thanks to the excellent theme (I would certainly grab a copy if it made it to our shores), it has already reached its original funding goal of £5,000.

Overseers from Thundergryph Games is a game in which each player plays the part of an Overseer, sent down from the heavens by The Goddess. AS an overseer, you can bend human traits to your will, and you will attempt to create a perfect symmetry of virtues and vices of humankind.

“A 3-6 player drafting and bluffing game with an interesting twist. Find the best balance, or completely crush it for your own good.”

With gorgeous art and attractive components, Overseers has easily reached its funding of 8,000 Euros, reaching almost 50,000 Euros with just under a week left to pledge. Shipping is EU-friendly (sorry British readers).

There has certainly been no shortage of Walking Dead games, though you could argue that there is no outstanding product based on the undead IP. Cryptozoic’s The Walking Dead: No Sanctuary is aiming to change that.

“Welcome to the world of THE WALKING DEAD: NO SANCTUARY, Cryptozoic’s intense new 2-4 player board game based on the hit AMC TV show. The game redefines the survival horror genre with gameplay that emulates the group dynamics from the series, as one player takes on the reins of Leadership and the other players can decide whether or not to support his or her choices. With every defied decision, Trust can decrease and Stress and tension can increase, diminishing Group Morale and placing all the survivors in serious danger. Each player must balance his or her own motivations (which cannot be shared with the others) with the needs of the group, making survival much more complex than simply mowing down countless numbers of the dead.”

It is strange to see a boardgame Kickstarter that is STILL not fully funded with over 1,300 backers, but this is one of the projects with the highest goals we’ve seen – $250,000 (no doubt the license accounts for a hefty part of that fee). With a good design team behind it (Brady & Adam Sadler – Star Wars X-Wing, Warhammer Quest), it does look to take the title of best Walking Dead licensed game.

FACT: Pandemic has made diseases popular. Here we have another title based on spreading sickness – Virus: An Infectious Card Game.

“An addictively quick and simple card game where you play as a Virus, competing to infect a host cell. The fun is Infectious!”

Virus has already funded and still has a massive 28 days left to go. (NOTE: Does the theme and cover art remind anybody else of Pandemic Contagion?)

Darkness: Sabotage is “A Sci-Fantasy/Thriller Space Crawl Pitting Space Pirates Against Demons”.

” A fearless crew of space pirates stumble upon the legendary warship, “The Darkness”. Breaching is the only option to board the vessel, but once aboard they realize the ship is a fly trap. Evil plans to break their spirit, make them minions and drop ’em off in Hell. But this crew will have none of it. They decide to sabotage the ship and end this diabolical scheme, even if it means they go down with it. Darkness Sabotage is a sci/fantasy-thriller -space crawl for 1-4 players. Featuring co-op play, pre-designed and randomly generated dungeon maps, dice driven action, turn based combat, puzzle solving, weapon upgrades, weapon bolt-ons, unique character attacks/defenses/abilities, glory rewards and ruthless waves of heinous monstrosities.”

Demons? Sci-fi? Space? PIRATES? Absolutely winning, no wonder people have thrown their Canadian Dollars at this game (128,000 of them, project funded). It features a load of great components, including 46 AMAZING miniatures (no seriously go look at them on their KS page).

Digital

Fan of Smash Up, the shufflebuilding game?  The good news is that Nomad Games is creating a digital version for Steam, Android and iOS.

“Up to four players will be able to take control of a vast array of crazy characters, from Superheroes to Monsters and Villains, and play against the AI or together with friends online or at home with pass-to-play.”

The Crisis: Heroes expansion is now available on the Star Realms app! Enjoy! pic.twitter.com/XJXUs9QXyp

— Star Realms (@StarRealms) July 6, 2016

The latest expansion for Star Realms was released last week. Crisis: Heroes is the third Crisis expansion to release for this great app.

“The third Crisis pack, Heroes, is available for purchase now! Heroes are cards that join your cause without delay, and await your command to rally their allies and give your turn a boost.”

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And that’s it for this week, have a good gaming weekend.