Kickstart Your Week! Tree Spirits, Dungeon Crawls and Slasher Films!

---

 

 

Kodama: The Tree Spirits

 

In ancient Japan, certain trees were believed to be protected by the Kodama, spirits that lived in those trees. These were sacred trees, and the elders from nearby villages would act as caretakers for the trees. Now, you will be the caretakers, creating a new home for the Kodama sprites.

 

 

In Kodama: The Tree Spirits, you will be growing a new home for the Kodama, through a wonderful card system. Starting with a tree trunk, you will lay down cards depicting branches so that your beautifully illustrated tree will steadily grow across the table top in front of you. Each section of the tree comes with some elements, be they mushrooms or grubs, stars or clouds, and collecting sets of these will earn you points, but so will meeting the preferences of the Kodama cards you’ll receive at the start of the game. These are your “secret objectives” that drive your strategy.

This is both a beautiful game, and a beautifully simple game, yet balancing the needs of your various Kodamas, deciding when to score them, and making best use out of the seasons special rule offers plenty to consider each turn. The use of cards here to create a growing tree is, without a doubt, a genius piece of design, creating a truly unique game that will appeal to anyone.

 

Kodama will be watching the campaign grow until November 12^th.

 

 

Super Dungeon Explore: Legends

 

Full disclosure: I have been a big fan of Super Dungeon Explore since its original release back in 2011. It is a tremendously silly hack and slash romp, less dungeon crawl and more dungeon sprint, with fantastic chibi miniatures that I’ve spent far too much of my time painting. With this Kickstarter, there is a new edition of that original core game, with amazing new sculpts and dungeon tiles, but more importantly they are releasing the Legends system.

 

 

No more will Super Dungeon Explore be a single adventure charge through the dungeon! Legends is a full campaign system, with story driven campaigns, levelling up of heroes, ever more powerful items to unlock and gain, and even better dice to use! The monsters you face, or control as the enemy Consul player, will also get stronger as the campaign progresses. The Legends core box includes lots of decks of upgrade cards, plus corridors and linking rooms to really put the explore in your Super Dungeon Explore. It adds rules for visiting towns, crafting new weapons, training, and all that extra RPG stuff that was left out of the original game. Two full story campaigns are included, and a whole raft of new adventurers are being unlocked during the campaign!

It seems like this week is Kickstarter’s week of story driven dungeon crawl games! In addition to Super Dungeon Explore Legends, we also have Swords and Sorcery in a more traditional fantasy setting, Z War One for a comic driven zombie game, and Blackout in a post-apocalyptic horror setting! Check those out if you prefer the themes, but Super Dungeon Explore takes my vote. Not only for the great miniatures but for the wealth of content that’s already available, offering a far greater scope than these newer games have the opportunity to provide.

 

Super Dungeon Explore becomes Legend on November 11^th.

 

 

Crimson Creek

 

Nothing like getting away from the city for a weekend in a cabin… in the woods… with some friends! Alcohol, sex, stereotypes and hopefully nothing psychotic waiting for you in the woods, or the barn, or down by the lake – Oh God! The hatchetman! Run! Run for your lives!

 

 

In an homage to 80s slasher flicks, Crimson Creek sends you and your witless friends out to the cabin to see if you can survive the night. Players must visit locations, peaking at cards to find the location of the hatchetman’s lair, and doing their best to be anywhere else, for at the end of each of the game’s 3 Acts, anyone at that location will be attacked! By morning you must discover the identity of the character that has been possessed by the hatchetman, or else you’ll never truly be safe!

Hopefully you and your friends will be able to work together to survive, and keep your terror in check, but during the course of play you may discover that it is you that has been possessed by the spirit of the hatchetman! It is you that is responsible for these grisly attacks! Now, you will win only by eliminating all the other players… a exciting twist for your slasher flick!

 

Crimson Creek’s campaign of terror ends on November 12^th.

 

Best of the Rest

 

[row][one_third][/one_third][two_third]Publish or Perish – A very cool deduction game for kids and adults! You are particle physicists colliding sub-atomic particles together to discover their properties. Publish your results, and earn a noble prize before time runs out. The game utilises an app to randomise the solutions each game, and features an incredible augmented reality system to bring the particles to life. The game may be quite simple for adults, but it’s a great game to get kids thinking and learning. Ends Nov 9^th.[/two_third][/row]

 

[row][one_third][/one_third][two_third]Gilded Devils – Two interacting games in one is the very cool selling point of Gilded Devils. Half the players will be industrialists building railways, oil refineries and steel mills, and connecting them all together, to earn money. However, they will need to buy political favours from the other set of players: the politicians campaigning to be president. They are engaged in a battle to control the states, for which they need the industrialists money to campaign, and also their rail lines to open up new regions to campaign in. One industrialist and one politician will win! Ends Nov 9^th.[/two_third][/row]

 

[row][one_third][/one_third][two_third]Prospectus – An elaborate trading game, in which players are junior mages buying and selling potions according to the whims of the market. Of course, as mages you can see how the future of the market appears, and from that determine which potions to buy and sell. However, you’re still new to this, and your predictions may be flawed according to the fates of the great crystal ball cube tower! Ends Nov 12^th.[/two_third][/row]

 

[row][one_third][/one_third][two_third]The Sugoï Series – Siam/Senseï/Yokaï No Mori – 3 2-player games in one Kickstarter! All beautifully illustrated, but not cheap either, due to the large wooden blocks that make up the game’s components. In Senseï, players must create a route for their character to reach the other side of the board, while preventing their opponent from doing the same. Yokaï No Mori has players attempting to eliminate a specific piece, while Siam is a competition between elephants and rhinos to push rocks off the board. Ends Nov 13^th.[/two_third][/row]

 

[row][one_third][/one_third][two_third]Kill Doctor Lucky – This inversion of Cluedo has players sneaking round the mansion, collecting murder weapons and finding hiding places from which to attack and kill Doctor Lucky, who has clearly angered a whole lot of people! Trick is, you need to make the murder attempt only when no one else can see you. Ends Nov 13^th.[/two_third][/row]

 

[row][one_third][/one_third][two_third]Yokai Battle – A card based battle game, on a grid of terrain cards. Play monsters to a position and attack a neighbour, and hope to be the last player standing. Orientation of the cards is important, to defend a weaker side and to attack with a strong side, as is matching the monster to its terrain. Each player has a unique deck with very pretty artwork. Ends Nov 14^th.[/two_third][/row]