I was less impressed with the candidates for my second Kickstarter roundup than I was for the first. I dug through the entirety of the Kickstarter’s gaming section, and fortunately managed to find a few gems and a couple diamonds in the rough.
First, a reminder: Alice in Wonderdice, featured in our first Kickstarter roundup, ends on Sunday, March 29! A $30 contribution will get you your own copy of the game.
Now then….let’s see what Kickstarter has to offer for this installment of Dicey Goblin’s Kickstarter Roundup.
1. Space Dandy Galactic Deck-Building Game
First up is the Space Dandy deck-building card game. Based on the anime of the same name, the game is similar in play to Dominion. From the Kickstarter page:
Dandy has gone and used the Aloha Oe’s bken warp drive and managed to converge every possible alternate universe into one, causing multiple copies of everyone in the known galaxies to run amok!
You’ll start out with a few basic cards and gradually expand your deck to add more options. Best of all, you can use Alien cards to attack other players.
The artwork here looks pretty fantastic, and I’m a fan of deck-building games like Dominion, so I think this looks pretty promising.
A $50 contribution will get you your own copy of Space Dandy Galactic Deck-Building Game. The campaign (already fully funded) ends on April 8.
2. Pandanté: Light & Dark
Light & Dark is an expansion to the original Pandanté game, which is all about Pandas, gambling, and bluffing. No, seriously. It’s a little bit like Texas Hold’em, but no one gets eliminated and there’s less folding.
The Light & Dark Expansion simplifies the rules of the original and adds tons more content. And since winning by lying is, according to the description, the highest honor among pandas, if you manage to win by lying, you earn the Golden Panda Coin (it’s also the highest honor you can earn).
I’m awful at bluffing, but this just seems too cute. I mean, it’s PANDAS!
$25 gets you the expansion, while $40 will get you the 2nd edition standard set, plus the expansion.
The Pandanté: Light & Dark campaign ends on April 11.
3. Red Flags
Red Flags runs in the same vein as Apples to Apples and Cards Against Humanity, and even Slash. The whole point of the game is to play white cards with specific attributes to create a date profile for another player. However, you also have to add a problematic red flag (a red card),and you don’t get to choose what it is.
Everyone plays their cards and makes their cse for their own hand, or against the others’.
These types of games are great party games because they’re low-involvement, low-skill, and generally go on only as long as everyone’s interested. Plus, it includes an R-rated red card expansion for when you want to get truly terrible.
Just $20 will get you the game, while $25 gets the game and expansion.
The Red Flags campaign (already funded) ends on April 11.
4. Mahou Shojo: Fight Like a Girl
This game I think qualifies as a diamond in the rough. First off, I love that it’s a Magical Girl-themed game. (I’ve said it before, my friends and I love anime.) I love that the creator designed the game specifically for young girls and really focused on diversity. Kudos to you!
Mahou Shojo is a 2-player battle card game. Players choose a magical girl and her alter ego and combine them to get their stats. The goal is to steal the other player’s 3 gems by defeating them in combat.
That said, the artwork is somewhat rough, something the creator plans to fix with Kickstarter Funding.
$20 gets you the starter pack, while $30 gets you the starter park plus an extra “Street Team” pack.
The Mahou Shojo: Fight Like a Girl campaign ends on April 8.
5. Tesla vs. Edison
This one is sure to delight history buffs and science geeks alike. Rooted in the rivalry between Edison and Tesla in the late 19th century, Tesla vs. Edison is a strategy game challenges players to take on the role of one of 5 major innovators, including Tesla, Edison, Elihu Thomson, Charles Brush, and Hiram Maxim.
Over the course of the game, players must hire employees and claim electrical projects in the US. At the same time, you develop technology, battle other companies with propaganda, and buy and sell stock.
The artwork looks pretty phenomenal and the game appears to be well thought out. It looks like it might be complex, though it’s supposed to play quickly (20 minutes per player), which suggests that it might not be as complicated as it appears to me.
The full game will cost you $49, and the Tesla vs. Edison campaign (already funded) ends on April 2.
Bonus: Binary Dice
I love all things geeky, and while I’m certainly not a programmer, I definitely get a kick out of these binary dice. And I imagine they’d be a great gift for any dice-collectors.
$8 will get you a single die, or a set of 5 for $25.
The Binary Dice campaign (already funded) ends on April 1.
What are your favorite Kickstarter games? Tell us about them!