Early June is the final time before summer break begins in many parts of the world. That makes it one of the most exciting periods, when it comes to crowdfunding games. Publishers do everything they can to launch their campaigns before everyone leaves to conquer mountains, beaches or their own hammocks.
Welcome to the first batch of our summer Kickstarter previews. Part 2 should drop by the end of the week. Enjoy!
Papillon – May 30th
Many of you probably remember the strange case of this kickstarter. The campaign got suspended due to some ToS related chaos, but luckily Kolossal Games has regained control over their account, and Papillon is finally ready to be crowdfunded again.
Butterflies sound like a bizarre theme choice, but we’re living in a world where Wingspan is the most popular game of the year (and I love it!). Papillon is a tile placement, area control euro game for up to 4 players. Everyone begins by putting flower tiles on the board. Turn order is decided through bidding. Whoever offers the most caterpillars – goes first.
Next: players draft tiles from the main board to their own gardens, including some special bonus items like gnomes. Flowers attract butterflies, which start living in your garden and help producing nectar. Afterwards they move to the big, cardboard potted flowers sitting near the board. Whoever manages to place the most of his own butterflies on these: wins.
The mechanics feel simple but fun enough. Visuals are where Papillon shines the most. The idea of creating colorful butterfly clips, and using them as an actual component of the game sounds and looks brilliant.
Batman: Gotham City Chronicles – Season 2 – June 4th
One of the highest funded Kickstarter games ever is about to make a great comeback next week. Batman: Gotham City Chronicles is an asymmetrical game aimed at 2 to 4 players. Each game starts with choosing a scenario (all themed after the adventures of one and only Dark Knight).
No matter how many of you are playing together – one person has to lead the forces of evil and play as the villain. The rest does everything they can to stop Joker, Clayface, The Riddler or whoever are they supposed to face in their adventure of choice.
Scenarios are pretty varied and include different minis, maps and goals to achieve. The action system is based on small cubes, that players have to manage properly by picking actions and regenerating. The person playing as the villain controls multiple characters at once.
The new campaign will offer all of the previous content: from the core boxes to all of the add-on scenarios and stretch goal miniatures.
Season two stuff includes a nice variety of new locations for you to explore like the alternative versions of Police HQ and Gotham City Sewers. There is also a bunch of new versus mode missions tailored for these specific boards as well as entire add-on expansions like “The League of Assassins” or “Batman Inc” including sets of minis, equipment cards, tokens, tiles and scenarios utilizing them.
Official Facebook Page (lots of season 2 pics)
Geeknson Board Game Table | QUESTOWER Ads Sytsem
Dungeon Drop – June 4th
I stumbled upon this title by complete chance and boy do I love how it looks. Dungeon Drop apparently won a design contest at The Game Crafter and is about to be crowdfunded starting June 4th.
Each player draws a random character, class and a secret task that dictates how to approach final scoring. The dungeon map is created by tossing a huge amount of colorful cubes on the table. Each color marks a different thing. Black ones are used to show corner pillars, yellow ones – gold, green cubes – goblins etc.
Next: heroes enter the dungeon, collect loot and try to gain as many points as possible. Games tend to be on the shorter side and last for a total of 3 rounds. Each round you toss additional cubes randomly and explore. Each 3 pillar cubes form a room of your dungeon, as long as there are no other pillars inside that triangle. After choosing a room to visit you gain all the cubes inside and take all of the actions related to them. That includes getting wounded or finding treasure. Hero abilities are pretty creative and involve actions like redropping all the cubes or flicking some towards the others to affect their final positions.
