Kickstarter Picks for the Week of April 14, 2014

What is this post all about? Well, it should pretty straightforward, but, if there's any confusion, this is where I'll be talking about a handful of Kickstarter projects each week, focusing on a few projects that launched during said week and a few that are about to end. Will I be focusing only on projects in need of funding? No. I will simply be focusing on projects that interest me, regardless of whether they've only raised $5 or raised ten times that of their original goal. Anyway, I think it's about time I got to the actual projects, eh. (P.S., this feature will be posted on Mondays starting next week and will likely always be board game heavy.)

• Recently Launched

Stratagem, an Abstract Strategy Board Game

Stratagem is, as the title says, an abstract strategy game and it looks like a game that both casual and hardcore gamers can enjoy; though, its perceived simplicity will definitely turn off those gamers who scoff at games that don't take an hour to setup and hours and hours to play--we all know at least one. Anyway, from what I've seen so far, Strategem looks like a good amount of accessible fun and I'm a big fan of the clean, simple design; also, Strategem was designed to be accessible for a handful of disabilities--color blindness, low vision, and short-term memory loss--and the team is open to helping the game be even more accessible and you can't not love that.

Linkage - A DNA Card Game with an Educational Attitude!

Linkage caught my attention immediately thanks to the well-designed final art that pops and reminds me a bit of colored pencil on black paper--I am, as y'all know, a sucker for good art. After I finished enjoying the lovely art, I started to look at the rest of the project--watching the gameplay demo (with prototype cards)--and thought the game, regardless of the art's quality, looked interesting--I'm always a fan of trying to mix a bit of education with something fun. Now, I haven't played Linkage and don't know anything about DNA Transcription, but, if Linkage can deliver a fun experience with a bonus bit of learning, I'm all for it.

• Ending Soon

IKOS: The Building Shape with Endless Configurations

I love LEGO. Anyone who knows me knows that I love building crap, especially building said crap with LEGO bricks; however, I'm always looking for different ways to funnel my creativity and IKOS looks like it was made just for me. I do worry about the number of possibilities available with IKOS--the singular piece design greatly limits the ultimate degree of variability--but I'm sure there are more than enough possibilities to justifying backing the project if you, like me, enjoy building random nonsense for no reason.

Fantasy Coins for Board Games, RPGs, LARP, or any occasion

I've played quite a few board games at this point and a good number of them use coins for various uses--usually as currency, of course--and, sometimes, the coins are so cheap, ugly, or both, that they slightly take away from the whole experience of a game--e.g., I love Cargo Noir, but I HATE the coins used for bidding; they're not terrible, but the color disgusts me and I can't not think about it every time I play. I know coin quality is not an important part of a game's design and better coins are not at all a necessity; however, if you have disposable income and want to pick up some better components for a game or two, the Fantasy Coins Kickstarter may have the perfect set of coins for you--I'm a fan of Feudal Japan set (if you couldn't already tell).

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Anyway, that's it and that's all for this week's edition of Kickstarter picks. If you have any thoughts about the projects mentioned or want to highlight a project not mentioned above, leave a comment below--I'm always interested in seeing what other's think about various projects and what projects interest others.