A weekend without gaming is a sad thing, don’t you think? Well, we’ll be sure not to let it happen again, but I hope your weekend had more boardgames involved. From this week on, we’ll have a small change on our news: I’ll no longer list Kickstarter as a separate category, there are simply too many publishers using the crowdfunding service now for that to still make sense. Instead, Kickstarter games will now also be listed by publisher. That doesn’t mean you have to fund all the projects – but you can if you want to.
Cranio Creations
At the Nuremberg Toy Fair this week – where we unfortunately didn’t manage to go – Cranio Creations are just now busy presenting their games for 2012. At least the ones that are ready for the public.
Pimp My Park – are you sure about this title? – lets you fulfil your childhood dream of managing an amusement park. In this new game by Aureliano Buonfino, Lorenzo Silva and Lorenzo Tucci Sorrentino, the same team of designers responsible for Dungeon Fighter, you’re responsible for the planning and maintenance of your park, including the planning of future attractions for the masses. As an extra bonus, the illustrations for Pimp My Park are credited to Marie Cardouat, famous for her work on Dixit. I’m curious what an amusement park ride designed by Marie will look like.
Alessandro Crespi chose the space race as the subject for his 1969 – with only minor tweaks to the history books: in order to accommodate five player, three other nations besides the USA and the USSR can now hope to be the first to reach the moon. If they don’t misscalculate and crash their rocket or, even worse, are sabotaged.
The newest game with the recently popular theme of evolution is called Mutatio, also by the team Tucci Sorrentino, Buonfino and Silva, pits you against climate change, the environment in general and of course everyone else because they’re trying to eat you. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Evolution is a harsh mistress.
Lookout Games
And yet more reasons to regret not being in Nuremberg: one of Lookout’s new games is a two-player variant of Agricola subtitled Der Bauer und das liebe Vieh. I wonder if the English edition will also allude to the old BBC series called Der Doktor und das liebe Vieh in German in some way. The game is supposed to take 30 minutes or less and not use up too much space, either. Two attributes I don’t usually connect to Agricola, I’m curious what the changes to the system will be. Also in the first half of 2012 Lookout Games will publish the new edition of Rüdiger Dorn’s Goa that we already announced in English from Z-Man Games last week.
Wishing Tree Games
The first project from Wishing Tree Games wants to be Kickstarted. Seven Sisters combines hand management and worker placement to gain the favour of the king’s seven daughters. Discontent with the old tradition of naming girls after virtues, these seven are named for the seven deadly sins. Yeah, I always wanted to court someone named Pride or Envy, they must be lovely people. Not only do you gain their favour, they also do you a favour if you are the most pleasing suitor. A favour from someone called Wrath? I’m almost sure that will be illegal. Despite the unpleasantly named daughters, Seven Sisters sounds very interesting.
Nevermore Games
Also now on Kickstarter is Chicken Caesar, a historically accurate game about the successful, brave and backstabbing roosters of the Roman Chicken Empire. I swear I’m not making this up, that really is the setting of the game. You compete with two to five other players to bring your roosters into the most prestigious offices of the empire – just to see them murdered and made into nuggets by their competitors.
Fantasy Flight Games
That a game is available – since last week, in this case – is not enough reason to stop with the previews. This week in “preview” for Wiz-War: the use of energy cards. And because one preview is never enough, you can also check out the rules for Rex: The Final Days of an Empire.
Artipia Games
From the Briefcase game page you can now download the rules as well. In Briefcase (by Sotiris Tsantilas and Nikolas Sakaloglou) you build a portfolio of companies to profit from later, but your options are restricted by the decision deck: in the manner of a deck-building game, you draw three decision cards per turn and those are your options of what to do on that turn. But your decision deck is almost static, what really changes is your company portfolio, so it’s not a classic deck-builder. Since Artipia is based in Europe they can’t receive payment through Kickstarter, but fortunately there is a European equivalent: indiegogo. The campaign there is set to start February 10th.
Alderac Entertainment
It must have been a good week to post rules, astrologically speaking. The rules for the latest Nightfall expansion Coldest War are now available together with this week’s preview cards.
Catalyst Game Labs
Hex-A-Gon belongs to the best kind of abstract strategy games: very simple rules, yet hard to play. On a hexagonal board, you jump knights over other knights to capture them, like the old Solitaire game, but competitively and on hexes. But to add spice, you can capture a whole chain of knights with one move, which may not always be in your best interest.
Mage Company
Coming this year from Mage Company are three games, as far as we know for now:
In Wrong Chemistry the players are more or less performing alchemy: they are creating new elements. To do that, they move various pieces around the board to create an arrangement matching an element card they are holding.
Astrologica is another game where you arrange elements on the board, but in this one it’s the planets, houses and signs of the Zodiac. Here you’re not trying to build a pattern from your card, you’re trying to gain points from the right arrangements of things according to their house, element, sign or planet.
And finally, because building cities is always a popular theme, you get to be an architect in Biruda. While you’re peacefully following your ambition to construct five buildings in three different sectors of the city, but of course your competitors are not giving you an easy time and interfere by placing obstacles in your way and sabotaging you with Hazard Cards.
In Other News
Maybe you remember us talking about Lorien Green and her movie project Going Cardboard: A Board Game Documentary a while ago. The project is a project no longer, it is now a finished movie and available from the website. There is also a trailer to make your decision to spend some money easier.
The adorable guy at the top of the page is a koala – as if you didn’t know – photographed by Christian Reusch (CC-BY-SA)