Meople News: Steamy Dungeon Sandbox

Ystari

The new game by Caylus designer William Attia will be available at Gen Con from Asmodee. Spyrium – you can tell it’s a Ystari game originally by the traditional y in the title – takes you into an alternate history England, a world of steampunk. By building factories and placing workers in them your goal is to produce the elusive material Spyrium and then process it in another plant to earn points. Besides managing your workers, money and Spyrium, you also have to manage your own game phase, because when you change phases is your own choice and independent from the other players. Whatever that may mean, I hope I’ll be able to tell you soon.

Fantasy Flight Games

What’s better than one news item about steampunky games? Right, two news items about steampunky games. Although some may already say “none”, given the recent deluge of games with that setting, but I still completely support this trend. So, if you like your steampunk with some post-apocalypse mixed in, then you’ll be happy to learn that the rules for Gearworld: The Borderlands are now available.

Koryo (Image by Moonster Games)
Koryo (Image by Moonster Games)

Level 99

It’s amazing, the stuff that can sneak up while you’re looking in the other direction. Like a bar fight, suddenly it’s there – okay, that’s not a surprise in some parts of the world. A card game about bar fights, however, that’s more unexpected. And it snuck up on me, because this is already week 4 of the Seven Card Slugfest spoilers. The idea of the game seems great, it really captures the atmosphere of good-natured violence you always see in the movies. On the mark, all players simultaneously start picking up cards from their decks and playing them on any other player. Some cards are regular punches, but some have special abilities as well. When the last card is played, you go through each players accumulated stack and see if he was knocked out and by who. Point are earned for scoring KOs and remaining upright yourself.

Moonster Games

Here’s an art preview at the characters cards from Koryo, the coming card game by Gary Kim. More steampunk!

Watchtower Games

The newest designer diary video of Fallen explores in detail how the Dungeon Lord and the Hero fight against each other in the boardless dungeon crawl. Despite the number of dice being involved, you won’t find a lack of decisions to make.

Stonemaier Games

Earlier this month, we found the newest project by Jamey Stegmaier and Alan Stone: Euphoria: Build a Better Dystopia,

a worker placement game set after the apocalypse, where knowledge of the past is suppressed and thinking for yourself discouraged. Euphoria has more than one way to victory and many interesting ideas in the details: for instance, knowledge makes your workers more efficient, but let them have too much knowledge and they might desert you.

Just like I promised back then, there is a Kickstarter project now. And a very successful one, too.

Far Off Games

Sometimes, I get conflicted about talking about a Kickstarter project, and Xia: Legends of a Drift System is one such game. On the one hand, this is a project with a lot of ambition – both in the game system and in the components which include 15 unique and pre-painted star ships – initiated by a first time designer with no prior experience in manufacturing. But on the other hand, designer Cody Miller talks about the support of a well-known manufacturer, the pictures on Kickstarter look amazing and professional and the scope of game play makes me drool. Cory describes Xia as a sandbox game where you get into your spaceship and, from then on, do whatever you think is cool: customize your ship, explore the galaxy, trade, complete missions, attack the other players – almost anything goes. That’s a lot of freedom for a boardgame, and I’d really love to give it a spin. I trust you Cody, make this game because I want it!

The photo of the week was taken by Warner Hocker at L’Anse Aux Meadows in Newfoundland, Canada. Remains of an 11-th century viking settlement were found at this site, evidence that they travelled to North America long before the “official” discovery of the New World. The house in the photo is a replica of a traditional house from that era. (Photo license is CC-BY)

Leave a Reply