February has been a great month for Kickstarter games, featuring a wide assortment from the creative mixing of tabletop and digital components, to gorgeous artwork, and some great game companies (we always love us some Green Couch Games).
Fabulous Beasts (Sensible Object) – This unique dexterity game blends tabletop gaming with digital components as players stack objects on a platform that is connected to a tablet. As you stack animals together, you create new, fabulous beasts which appear on the tablet, and create a unique world. You continue to stack and build the tallest tower that you can before it comes crashing down and the game ends.
Dreamwell (Action Phase Games) – Players are exploring a dream world and searching for their lost friends. The dream land is built of tiles, each of which shows an environment, creature, and pathways to other tiles. At the start of the game you are given two cards which tell you the friends you are trying to find, as well as the creatures and environments you need in order to find them. On your turn you may take three actions: move one of your pawns around the dream world, rotate a tile, draw a card, or locate a friend. The game features lovely, dreamy artwork.
Wok on Fire (Green Couch Games) – In this English version of a game that originally debuted in the Tokyo game market, the play area is considered the wok. A portion of the game cards are set aside as supplies while the rest are spread out in the wok area. A player grabs a spatula card and uses it to flip the cards in the center of the table. Flipped cards that fall outside of the wok area are out of the game. After flipping, you may pick two ingredients. Choosing some cards will give you special actions. Afterwards you add two cards from the supplies into the wok and the turn passes to the next player.
Vampsylvania (C. Michael Hall) – Play as a newly risen vampire trying to capture more villagers than the other vampires in town. Each round a new villager appears and everyone plays cards to raise their own vampire score, lower their opponents', or just make that villager tougher to catch. Players then roll dice and add that number to their vampire score to see who captures the villager. But watch out — it is possible for no one to have a high enough score to catch the villager, in which case it joins the angry mob. If the angry mob grows too big, everyone loses the game.
Nightmare Forest: Dead Run (Dave Killingsworth) – Players are racing through a woods full of zombified animals. Each of you has a line of cards that represents your path through those woods. On your turn you can choose to search your current area for useful items or flip over the next card in your path and fight a zombie. Attacks are determined with dice rolls, and a press-your-luck element comes in when you decide how many dice you want to spend on a fight and how many you want to hold back in hopes of progressing farther in the woods this turn. You can read our preview of the game here.
Ninja Roll (How We Roll Games) – Roll the ninja die and complete the ninja challenge it gives you. Each of the ninja die’s eight sides will present you with a unique challenge. Challenges are based on Jacks-like mechanics, be it flicking the throwing star or gathering bricks. But you want to be careful: when you roll game pieces, it can affect how difficult it will be for the next player to complete their challenge. You don't want to make things too easy for them!
Space Pioneers (Thomas Neu) – Players set up supply networks with planets and spaceship cards. In order to play new cards in your network, you must match some of the symbols on the card with the card you are connecting it to. When you play a planet card that is identical to one that is already in your network, you may remove the old one to score victory points. Each player also has a mission and top secret card. If you complete the tasks listed on these cards, you earn extra points.
Zombie Tower 3D (Cosaic) – A three-floored tower separates the game into three or four sections, depending on the number of players. Each player may only look at their own section of tower. Players must work together, communicating verbally and passing items through slots in the tower walls, in order survive and escape the zombie-infested tower. However each player has their own, secret objectives and only one player will be the winner, so you can't always trust the information your opponents are sharing. You can read our preview of the game here.
Full disclosure: unless otherwise noted, we have not seen or played any of the above games. Our assessment of each is based on the information given on the crowdfunding project page.
