Fireteam Zero
by Emergent Games
Sound Familiar? It should! Not long after they were originally written up for our first edition of the Kickstarter Spotlight, Emergent Games decided to reformulate their campaign and pulled it down. Back again, they’ve hit 10x their previous funding levels and have surpassed the $50k goal in a single day.
Fireteam Zero, the first project by Emergent Games, promises to be a miniatures-based survival-horror co-op game for up to four players. Unlike similarly-themed games, your characters are not your usual cast of out of their depth investigators and social workers, this crew is a heavily armed and specially trained group of black-budget soldiers. They live for this sort of stuff!; which means, of course, that the threats they face are simply that much deadlier.
Arcadia Quest
by CoolMiniOrNot
I skipped over this project last week due to mixed feelings over the nonsense that always surrounds CoolMiniOrNot projects, but this deserves inclusion all the same. Featuring the same chibi-style miniatures from Super Dungeon Explorer and the like, Arcadia Quest is a campaign-length game in which players lead guilds of heroes on a quest to dethrone the vampire lord and reclaim the city of Arcadia for their own.
In the end, only one guild may lead, so players must battle against each other as well as against the evil forces. Advertising a branching series of scenarios, the campaign offers the promise of leveling up your heroes to gain new weapons and abilities, and even taking your prior deeds and failures into account.
Greed
by Queen Games
Another week, another Queen Games project on Kickstarter.
Set in the American 60’s, Greed is the latest game from Donald X., known for both Kingdom Builder and Dominion. Described as a ‘card drafting game for 2-5 players’, each player takes on the role of a gangland boss, attempting to consolidate power within the city. Featuring a unique art style that harkens back to the comics and advertising of the time, this looks like it could be a fun little game, despite the darker tone it portrays. At this point, there’s still a few ‘early-bird’ slots available at a $10 discount! (PS: I detest the practice of these pledge levels.)
20th Anniversary Edition of Mage: The Awakening
by Onyx Path Publishing
The tenth project by Onyx Path Publishing, this time they’re set to produce the 20th Anniversary Edition of Mage: The Awakening in a sweet, leather-bound and gilded format. Despite some complaints about delayed shipping from prior projects, backers continue to flood their coffers with funds for each successive system that they’ve given this treatment to, including Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Exalted, and even lesser-known lines such as Mummy: The Curse.
Eternity Wars
by Justin Wachholder
Justin Wachholder takes their second stab at this RTS-inspired board game, renaming it to Eternity Wars and lowering the funding goal as part of the redesign. Players will be required to manage resources, build bases, recruit armies, and engage in strategic combat in order to become the victor!
To survive, you must be able to maneuver and plan at both the macro and micro levels, with a World Map showing the broad strokes of your growing empire as buildings are constructed and units recruited, while the action moves down onto a gridded Battle Map when two forces meet.
Cheeseonomics
by Dale Tolley
Cheeseonomics, designed by Dale Tolley and published by Eagle and Gryphon games, is a hand and memory-management card game of collecting sets and producing cheese. For 2-5 players of age 8 or up, this looks to be a small little filler with an amusing design and a playtime of 20-30 minutes.
Llamanomics
by KC Tobey
There must not be very much to do up in Utah, as this is the second weird ‘-onomic’ game to come out of that state this week. Putting the player in the shoes of a llama-equipped merchant, your job is to manage the fluctuating supply and demand of a chaotic market amidst the background of a world gone mad.
