Jess’s Fave Five Kickstarters of the Week 6/21/19
It’s Kickstarter time! This week the list is packed full of fun and a few expansions! Let’s see which ones caught my eye.
Darwinauts – A game of interdimensional exploration
Exploring other dimensions can be exciting; you get to see new worlds, meet interesting wild life, and, while distracted by something profoundly interesting, perhaps get trapped as the wormhole that brought you here, shuts behind you. In Darwinauts, the players are inter-dimensional explorers trying to gather as much knowledge as they can before the portal to home closes.
Each turn players will be able to take 2 actions either placing tiles, workers, moving things around, and discovering and recording species. You’ll build up the board piece by piece until the rift tile is drawn, then the board begins disintegrating. Each turn, tiles without meeples on them will be removed until no more tiles can be removed, signaling the rift has closed and the game is over. Whoever gains the most points from their recorded species wins. Darwinauts is very light and quick to play and Vincent Dutrait’s art is amazing as always. Learn more about Darwinauts on Kickstarter here.
Sensor Ghosts & Assembly: 2 Unique Solo/Coop Puzzle Games
The good people of Wren games are back, this time not only with a new game, called Sensor Ghosts, but also a new expansion for their first game, Assembly, as well as rules that allow you to combine copies of Assembly so that it can play 3 or 4 players.
Assembly is set on an orbital platform where a deadly virus has killed off all the crew except for the players. The computer is trying lock everything down and the players must build a spaceship and escape before it is too late. Sensor Ghosts continues this story; assuming the players have escaped and must now navigate a dangerous asteroid field to find their way back to earth. Unfortunately the Ai from the orbital platform has hitched a ride and is messing with your sensors.
Both games use cooperative play and hidden information in interesting and unique ways. We did a full preview of Assembly that you can check out here and you can learn more about Sensor Ghosts on Kickstarter here.
Endeavor: Age of Expansion
Age of Expansion is a new expansion (i see what you did there Burnt Island Games) for Endeavor: Age of Sail, a fun area-influence and set collection game where players sail from Europe to establish shipping routes and set up colonies in other countries. This expansion adds a totally new set of buildings and cards as well as new mechanics that could add new life to the game.
The new mechanics include trading, which allows you to swap one of your tokens with one anywhere on the map, fortifying, which helps you when battling, and conscription, which gives certain buildings automatic discs for free allowing you to active them while spending your precious actions elsewhere. With the new buildings and cards, there is a lot more packed into this expansions. Check out Endeavor: Age of Sail on Kickstarter here for more details.
Escape New Quests & Traps
Escape: The Curse of the Temple is a cooperative, press-your-luck game where everyone must escape a cursed temple, picking up treasure a long the way, before it collapses. This new expansion adds, you guessed it, new quests and traps!
The first expansion module adds three Quests which add new challenges to the game such as the Riddle Chamber which has 4 tiles that must be revealed in the correct order. Players will roll to reveal the tiles, but if they turn them over in the wrong order, the tiles reset and they must start all over again.
When traps are revealed they place players in dire circumstances such as the quicksand which forces a player to have to roll to free themselves from the room. They only have a limited number of rolls before they sink too deep, but other players can enter the room to try to help them escape.
Escape New Quests & Traps adds a lot to the game and if you don;’t already own it, you can pick up the Escape big box with this Kickstarter as well. Explore the campaign here on Kickstarter.
HABITATS XL Expansion
Habitats is a delightful game about building a giant wildlife park that gives a variety of creatures homes in their nature habitats. The Habitats XL expansion adds new animals that need bigger spaces than any of the other base animals, camp sites that give you new ways to score points, and 4 more flower tiles to keep the game balanced.
With the addition of the new animals, Habitats XL lasts 3 extra rounds to give you time to satisfy the animals needs. I love this. Habitats is an awesome game and just having more of it sounds like a blast. If you don’t own Habitats, you can pick up the 3rd edition via the Kickstarter as well as other great other Cwali-games. Check out Habitats XL on Kickstarter here.
What Kickstarters are you backing this week? Let me know in the comments below and Check back next week for more fun projects!