Casual Games on Kickstarter: Artisan Dragons, Reiner Knizia, and Feuding Foodies

Flamecraft (Cardboard Alchemy) – Who knew dragons were such excellent cooks and artisans? In Flamecraft, on your turn you move your dragon to a shop and then choose to either collect resources or to enchant that shop. When you collect resources, you collect one for each icon shown on the shop and on any enchantment cards at that shop. You may then play a dragon to the shop if there is an empty space and the dragon card has the right matching icons. You may also activate the ability of a dragon at the shop and the shop's ability if it has one. If you enchant a shop, you spend the resources to take an enchantment card from the market and add it to the shop. This will allow the shop to produce more resources on future turns. You can then activate the abilities of all the dragons that are present there. If a shop is filled with dragon cards at the end of your turn, a new shop card is added to the town.

Reiner Knizia's Criminal Capers Collection (Bitewing Games) – A Kickstarter for three Reiner Knizia designed cards games. In Soda Smugglers, players take turns being the border guard. Each other player may only bring in one soda bottle. Players simultaneously play two cards face-down and one card face-up as their bribe for being allowed past by the guard. The guard may choose to accept a bribe, allowing a player to earn bottle caps from both his other cards, or may choose to inspect one of a player’s cards. If there is only one bottle on the inspected card, the guard must compensate the player; otherwise he earns points for smuggled bottles. Pumafiosi is a trick-taking game. The player who plays the second highest card is the one who wins the trick, and then adds the winning card to the row of hierarchy positions, earning points at the end of the game for the positions their cards occupy in the hierarchy. In Hot Lead players simultaneously bid for criminal cards with their investigators. At the end of the game you earn points for the value of the criminals you have collected. But if you collect too many criminal cards of one color, you are forced to discard them.

Feuding Foodies (FeudingFoodiesGame) – There are three recipe cards on the center of the table, each requiring different ingredients in order to complete. On your turn, you draw a card face-up so everyone can see it. You then choose an action: lock in a recipe, play a card for its ability (abilities include stealing cards from opponents or forcing an opponent to lose an action), or do nothing. When locking in a recipe, you and your teammate must collectively play all the ingredient cards required for it. Hopefully you were correct about what ingredients your teammate is holding, because communication is limited, and if you fail to fulfill the recipe, an opponent gets to steal one of your cards. The first team to reach twelve points wins the game.

Nersha (Gobico) – In this two-player abstract strategy game, the board is made up of tiles that can be moved around to form different configurations. There is no capturing of opponent pieces, but you can block one another as you cannot move through or onto an opponent’s piece. Your goal is to lead three of your pieces home before your opponent does. When a piece reaches home, it stays there, meaning it can no longer be used to block your opponent. A piece can move forward, back, left, or right, but not diagonally. Once a piece starts moving, it must continue in that same direction until it reaches an obstacle (this might be the edge of the map, a feature on the map, or an opponent's piece). The same piece cannot be moved twice in a row. Your pieces interact with map features in different ways: mountains may not be moved through, your piece stops on forests but may move out of them on future turns, lakes take your piece off the board, and portals allow you to move your piece to any other unoccupied portal.

Dustbiters (Dustbiters Team) – Eight vehicle cards are placed in a row on the table, forming a convoy. Four form the back of the convoy and belong to the start player, while the other four represent the front of the convoy and belong to the second player. Both players start the game with a hand of four vehicle cards. Each turn you may take three actions. Actions include playing one card in your hand to the front of the convoy, moving one of your cards forward or back one space in the convoy, drawing a card, or using an ability that is written on one of your vehicles in the convoy. At the end of each turn the vehicle in the back of the convoy is destroyed. You win the game when all your opponent's cars in the convoy are destroyed.

Wicked & Wise (Weird Giraffe Games) – In this team based trick-taking game, some players are dragons, playing a card game against each other, while the other players are the mice of the dragons, working to help their dragon win. At the start of every round, each team chooses a goal to work towards, such as winning certain cards or winning a trick with a certain suit. Each round consists of five tricks. Dragons play a card for its numerical value while mice play cards for the ability it triggers. Abilities include, for instance, allowing dragons and mice to swap cards or draw extra cards, or earning coins for your team. The player who wins the trick gets to choose whether to gain coins or draw a treasure card (treasure cards have unique abilities) with the losing team getting the reward not chosen. If a team met its goal at the end of the round, they earn coins, however if they failed then they lose coins.

Collabescape (Insync Games) – Collabescape is a replayable escape room board game, with a double-sided board to support two different scenarios: a hotel and a manor. Each player chooses a unique character, each of whom can only move in certain ways and can only collect certain clues. You have to race against the clock to escape. The game is designed to feature puzzles that can be solved multiple times. It also features both a cooperative and a competitive game option.