Casual Games on Kickstarter: Space Bases and Presidential Elections

Mission to Planet Hexx (James A. Fitzpatrick III) – You take three actions per turn. Actions include adding a space or planet hex tile to the board, moving by rolling a die and moving up to that number of tiles (you earn data cubes when you land on a planet), spending data cubes to add a hex tile from your hand to your mission file tile, and activating event tiles (however, some events can be played by an opponent against you on your turn). Hex tiles on the board have different abilities, which you can use to combo off events you play and actions you take. The first player to complete all the requirements on their mission tile wins the game.

Buy the Vote! (Coozies Games) – Each player starts the game with ten million dollars, and gains additional money on rounds four and seven. During round one, three state card are placed in the center of the table, while on subsequent rounds the number increases. Each round players secretly choose which (if any) states to bid money on and how much and then all votes are revealed. Each state goes to the player who bid the most for it, but all money bid is lost whether you won or not. If a state is not bid on that round, or if it was a tie, the state card remains on the table and during the next round another state card will be attached to it. Each state card is worth a different amount of electoral votes. At the end of the game the player who has the most votes is named the party nominee, while the player who came in second is their running mate. If their combined electoral votes hits a certain number, they are also considered to have won the election!

Lunar Base (Ole Busborg Jensen) – Players are building space stations. On your turn may take one of the actions shown on your station card: drafting cards from the supply to your hand, selling cards from the supply to earn credits, or spending credits to add a card to your base. When adding a card to your base, you must connect the colored half circles on it to matching half circles on a card (or cards) already in your base. Based on the colors of these circles, future cards will be cheaper to build. Cards added to your base can also have abilities, and additionally on your turn you may pay credits to play agent cards which also have special actions.

Fairy, Unicorn, Mermaid, Princess, Kitten (Summit Drive Games) – A family friendly card game that features some truly adorable artwork. The goal of the game is to collect sets of cards, pairing the correct follower cards with princess cards based on the icons shown on them. Once you manage to create a set, you score it, earning the points shown on the princess card. At the start of the game, each player is dealt seven cards. On your turn, you may ask another player for a specific princess or follower card and if they have it they must give it to you, otherwise you draw the top card from the discard pile or draw pile, or you may discard a princess card in order to draw a number of cards equal to the value of that princess card. The first player to twelve points wins the game.

Tacticum (Tony Ripley) – This two player strategy game comes packed in a portable travel tin, and is played on a small grid map with a handful of game pieces. Movement in the game is simple. Each piece can move as many spaces as it wishes orthogonally (though it cannot move over another unit or beyond the edge of the board). In order to capture one or more pieces you must flank them on either side. The game comes with multiple scenarios to play.

Arcana Rising (Grey Fox Games) – Each round, players start with six spell cards in hand. Everyone chooses one card to add to their tableau or to discard in order to cast spells already in their tableau. You then pass the remaining cards to another player. Players continue to draft cards in this fashion for the rest of the round. However, each spell belongs to a specific school of magic and each turn of the round only spells from two set schools of magic can be cast, as determined by randomized tokens, so you have to plan carefully if you hope to activate a spell. The player with the most points at the end of three rounds wins the game.

Lizard Wizard (Forbidden Games) – Players are wizards, acquiring resources to cast spells or to sell them for mana. Each time you play a card to gain resources it also increases the mana value of certain resources, while each time you sell a resource it drops in value. Players spend mana to buy spells, build towers, and bid on wizards against other players. You can also go dungeon diving in a push-your-luck style mini game that earns you gold which you use for tower building. Each card belongs to a certain school of magic and collecting matches is worth extra points at the end of the game. You can read our preview of Lizard Wizard here.