FryxGames
One thing is true about practically everything to do with zombies: there are always more of them, and the longer you hand around the more of them come. FryxGames’s Zombies & Survivors, being a deck-building game, makes that happen with a simple rule: every time you have to shuffle your deck you have to shuffle more zombie cards into the deck. So you’ll encounter more and more zombies, but at the same time you grow weaker, drawing fewer and fewer useful cards between all those zombies. You’ll be happy to have tools like the chainsaw when that happens.
Kickstarter
Hidden identity games cast you as all kinds of evil things. Werewolves, for instance. Or agents of an oppressive government as in The Resistance. In the latest entry to the genre that is on Kickstarter you might be literally Hitler, literally. That will be hard to top. One player in Secret Hitler is the fascist dictator before his rise to power. Some more players will be members of the Fascist party. All of the above win if six fascist laws pass, or if three pass and Hitler becomes the Chancellor. All the other players, the Liberals, win if they pass five liberal laws or assassinate Hitler. There are two novelties in Secret Hitler over other hidden identity games. One is that Hitler doesn’t know who his team is. The Fascists know him, but not the other way around. The other is a random element with the laws. Each round, three are drawn and the President and Chancellor work together to pass one. That law being fascist or liberal may give some information about the players’ alignments, but it might just be the cards they got. Secret Hitler is a very tense game of hidden identities. And if you think it’s all in a bit of bad taste, then you’re right. One of the designers is Max Temkin, who is also one of the designers of Cards Against Humanity. A guarantee for bad taste. (For the Germans here: despite the game’s theme, the art visible on Kickstarter does not show any Nazi symbolism, so it should be okay with the German ban of swastikas etc.)
Alderac Entertainment
You know what we didn’t have for some time? A Smash Up card preview! This friendly fellow is in the next expansion It’s Your Fault, the one where everyone got to vote on the new factions. Mako is the first representative of the Shark faction, and true to form he shows up where there is blood in the water.
Spielworxx
Spielworxx have posted a very early announcement of a new game by Stefan Risthaus, author of Arkwright. This new game, working title Gentes, will be a civilization game with “some interesting twists, especially concerning time management”. What little we can see from the photos shows us the game will be set around the Mediterranean and you will use different characters to take actions, like the Chronicler to play a card and the Philosopher to take fresh population. Gentes is planned for release in 2017, so Risthaus fans will have to be patient.
Dragon Dawn Production
The Kickstarter campaign for Dragon Dawn’s diceless dungeon crawler Perdition’s Mouth: Abyssal Rift is still going. If you were on the fence about it before, then it’s worth another look, they revamped the campaign last week and it might be more interesting for you now. Oh, and did I mention the Witch’s Grotto expansion that comes with the Kickstarter edition. I have high hopes we’ll get this funded, because after our experience with the prototype I really want this game.
This week’s featured photo, taken by Julen Iturbe-Ormaetxe and shared with a CC-BY-SA license, shows a building in the historic Central Zone of Andra do Heroismo in the Azores, an important port for crossing the Atlantic back in the day and a beautiful city now. Thank you for sharing this photo, Julen!