Casual Game Crowdfunding: Wildlife Photography, Mad Scientists, and Pocket Adventures

Redwood (Sit Down!) – In this game about wildlife photography, on your turn you will choose two templates. One will be a movement template that you attach to your photographer on the board and it will show how far and at what angle you will move. You also select a shot template that will determine what area of the board your picture will capture. You then move and take your photo. The background to your shot, the sun's location, and what objects and animals are captured in the picture will all determine the quality of your photo, the tokens you gather, and the ultimate number of points you earn for your photographs. Different objectives will have you trying to photograph different things, while animals move around the board after their pictures are taken.

14 Frantic Minutes (Crazy Like a Box) – A cooperative puzzle game in which players must solve a series of tile-placement puzzles by placing tiles on the layout of a circuit board, connecting the switch to different colored nodes. Which nodes you need to connect it to is determined by a challenge card drawn at random, which helps to randomize the game and bring more replayability to the puzzles. You work your way through a series of these circuit boards, each representing a different room. A soundtrack app advances the evil genius from one room to the next, and if he ever reaches the room you are currently in, you lose the game. Complete all the puzzles without being caught by the evil genius in order to win the game.

Pocket Book Adventures (Grumpy Spider Games) – A simple little pocket-sized dungeon crawler that only needs a pencil and no dice, designed for one player. Each map comes with monsters and loot. Each turn you can move 1-4 spaces in a straight line (turning if you reach an obstacle and picking up any items you pass over). When you end your movement near a monster you must fight it by putting your pencil on the dot over the enemy's icon and, without looking, lift your pencil and try to aim for the center of the enemy's target. Where you land in relation to the center of the target determines how much damage you deal. Some maps also have puzzles built in with special movement rules you must figure out a way around, while others will have boss monsters with special combat rules.

We're Sinking! (Ludamus Games) – In this semi-cooperative pirate game, you are sailing home with a ship full of treasure when it comes under attack and starts to sink. Players can work together to defeat the enemy, in which case the player with the most points from treasure cards is the winner. Or, if the ship sinks, the player with the fewest cards in hand is the winner. With a very neat boat component with levels that come out from the bottom to represent sinking beneath the waves, players must choose when to work together and when it's time for betrayal.

Cubed (Friendly Rabbit Inc) – In this domino-inspired game, the game pieces are hexagons that can feature up to three different colors. However, edges can also be one of two different heights, and in order to play a tile you must match both height and color to the pieces already on the table. There is also a black, blocking color, that prevents players from laying down tiles adjacent to it. The first player to play all of his or her tiles wins the game.

Roll to the Top, Pollen, and Big Top (BoardGameTables.com) – Three new games from BoardGameTables. Roll to the Top is a roll-and-write in which players are racing up famous landmarks. All players pull numbers from the same set of dice, adding the values to mark them on their boards, keeping in mind that numbers must equal or increase as they climb up the board. In Pollen (designed by Reiner Knizia), players play cards to the tableau in the center, trying to surround meeples, scoring them if they have the most matching icons around it once it is completely surrounded. Finally, The Big Top is an auction game in which you are bidding on acts for your circus, and the acts you win affect your future bids as you must meet their bidding goals on future auctions for them to score you points.

Biergarten (Blue Wing Games) – Each turn, you will draw a tile from the draw deck, the display, or from another player's hand, and then play one tile from your hand to your biergarten (beer garden). Players score points for playing tiles that have matching colors, connecting umbrellas, and for walling off their garden.