Note: All artwork taken from each projects crowdfunding page.
Welcome, once again, to our look at Kickstarter (and other crowd-funding) projects catch the attention of Our Meeple Overlords. Today, we take a look at four board game and board game-adjacent projects that, if we had unlimited funds, we’d go all-in for.
The Dice Tower 2021
First up, we have The Dice Tower Kickstarter 2021. Obviously, we love The Dice Tower. We’ve even appeared on Favorite Game Friday a few months ago, and we just might show up again this Friday! This is a fairly risk-free Kickstarter. The Dice Tower has been around for over 15 years, and for several years now, they’ve run a Kickstarter to fund the upcoming year, complete with a ton of rewards to chose from. The Dice Tower is probably the most influential boardgaming content creator channel, and if you support gaming at all and can afford it, I highly recommend throwing some money their way.
Darwin’s Journey
Darwin’s Journey looks like one of those fairly heavy eurogames with lots of interesting decisions, and I’m here for it. What I’ve seen from videos, it kind of reminds me of Endeavor, what with the areas of the board that need to be opened up to use and its variable-power player boards. Or maybe it’s because the game is so beige.
Despite all the beige, it’s a great-looking game, and I love the theme! Players recreate Darwin’s journals, gathering specimens, making observations, and adding to the sum of human knowledge. My only question: Who are the players playing? Other scientists? Are they all Darwin?
Regardless, it looks like fun, and I love that it’s an uncomplicated kickstarter with only two reward levels: the standard game, and the deluxe version. The deluxe components are great, too: metal coins, plastic “wax” seals, lots of wooden tokens. I’m looking forward to this one.
Masters of Mutanite
Look, I am a fan of just about everything this game is doing. Superheroes? Love ’em. Deckbuilding? When it’s good, it’s gooooood. Variable powers and character advancement? Yes, please. Colorful table presence? This game looks like a 90s cartoon!
Perhaps the most refreshing thing about Masters of Mutanite, though, is that the designers resisted the urge to fill the box with expensive plastic minis. This game is all cardboard, and frankly, with the comic book/cartoon theming of this game, 2D cardboard is the way to go.
Check this game out! You move around the board, collecting powers and energy, punching and zapping your opponents along the way. That’s cool, but you can also throw scenery at them. Is Katalyst in your way? Throw a freakin’ car at her!
Cthulhu Dark Arts Tarot
OK…this isn’t a board game, but as tarot cards have been used in (and possibly invented for ) games, it is board game adjacent.
I’m fascinated by tarot cards. I don’t read tarot cards, but I do have a small collection of decks that I occasionally flip through. The Cthulhu Dark Arts Tarot, which I discovered on Gamefound, is gorgeous, AND it’s Cthulhu Mythos-themed, which ticks all the right boxes for me.
Seriously, though, look at this art by French art collaborative Fortifem. These artists (Adrien Havet and Jesse Daubertes) along with writer Maxime Le Dain, have managed to create a tarot deck that borrows from the Cthulhu Mythos, follows (mostly) the imagery of your standard Rider-Waite deck (on the major arcana), and still feels original.
The higher-level tiers come with prints of the art used on the cards, a 160-page book explaining each card in detail from the notes of a (fictional) art history professor, and a (possibly sold-out, unfortunately) special edition of the deck in black silk-screen. This looks like a great project to back for tarot fans or for someone looking for cool props for their Call of Cthulhu games.
And that’s what caught our attention this week in crowd funding! Are there any projects we missed? Let us know in the comments, or find us all over the internet!