Geek Haven New Year: Stews, Stories and Spooks

It’s a new year, but Geek Haven, a.k.a. crowdfunding platform Kickstarter’s gaming section, is still going strong. Here’s are six more of the most eye-catching projects that want your financial support to help them take their place in gaming history. One tip: when you write that check, be sure to get the date correct. It’s 2014, people!

 Unsung Story: Tale of the Guardians: A new tactical RPG from Yasumi Matsuno, designer of Vagrant Story, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Final Fantasy XII? Yes, please. Unsung Story: Tale of the Guardians is already being developed by Playdek (mobile developers responsible for the Agricola and Ascension apps) for iOS and Android platforms, but the Kickstarter aims to widen the market to Windows PC and tablet, Mac and Linux. There are also two card games in the works that will expand the political history of Rasfalia, the game’s fantasy setting. Like Matsuno’s previous games, we can expect a nuanced political storyline playing out from multiple POVs, with plenty of moral grey areas and opportunities for deep character progression.

 Zombie 15′: Unsung Story is a video game being developed by a team versed in tabletop conversions; Zombie 15′ is a tabletop game inspired by zombie survival video games. Unlike many other zombie-themed board games, which treat the walking dead like polite little queuers who will happily wait their turn before they bite your face off, Zombie 15′ aims to crank up the tension by having each of its 15 scenarios play out in only 15 minutes of real time. The accompanying soundtrack is intermittently interrupted by a zombie growl, which brings a handful of flesh-eaters (or sometimes an entire horde) directly into the current player’s path. Sensing a theme? The playable characters are all 15 years old–the zombie virus only targets adults–giving Zombie 15′ a lively visual flair that’s unique among zombie games.

 Novus AEterno: I don’t have a lot of experience with PC space conquest games, but a friend recently told me that every space game wants to be Master of Orion II. If there’s a kernel of truth to that, it should at least be modified here–Novus AEterno from Taitale Studios wants to be bigger than Master of Orion II. Billing itself as “The Largest Strategy Game Ever.” (note the full stop), Novus AEterno is a real-time strategy MMO that is universal in scope. Built around the four pillars of Diplomacy, Information, Military and Economy (a variation on the 4X tenets of Exploration, Exploitation, Expansion and Extermination),  Novus AEterno has earned over $170k in backer support already thanks to its promises of wide-open sandbox gameplay, but there are still stretch goals to unlock, including new races, ship officers and a 3D-rendered ship bridge to explore in your quest for conquest.

 Tiny Epic Kingdoms: Scoping in from macroscopic to microscopic, Tiny Epic Kingdoms takes the same 4X gameplay and boils it down to a $16, pocket-sized, 30-minute microgame. Utilizing a small deck of cards and a handful of wooden cubes, Tiny Epic Kingdoms lets you control one of 12 unique factions (with more to come in the form of stretch goals and add-ons) in a race to gather resources, research new skills and, ultimately, claim control of the biggest swath of territory. Like Novus AEterno, Tiny Epic Kingdoms has gamers excited, gathering more than $85k of funding so far (that’s a lot of $16 pledges) with plenty more stretch goals to burn through.

 Storyscape: Based on a set of game mechanics conceived by veteran roleplaying game designer Robin D. Laws (creator of the GUMSHOE system), Storyscape hopes to free pencil-and-paper roleplaying from the shackles of, well, pencils and paper, using an app-based digital interface that automates the most time-consuming and fiddly elements of roleplaying so that the players and gamemaster can focus on the story and adventure. A quick read through the main page and updates reveals a promisingly flexible system centered around the use of Tags, which can describe everything from race and class to personality traits, relationships and quest-specific knowledge. There’s also a built-in marketplace that allows talented gamemasters to profit from their industry and others’ laziness. The main thing standing in the system’s way is that, to all appearances, it’s not enough for just the gamemaster to have the app–every player must hold a separate tablet or laptop with the app loaded onto it, taking the focus of the interaction out of the living room and into the screen.

 Burgoo: Jumping on the microgame wagon, Burgoo by Dan Manfredini (designer of Monkey Lab and Venture Forth) is the newest project from TMG, who have experience running Kickstarter campaigns for similarly bite-sized tabletop games like Coin Age and Templar Intrigue. Like those prior projects, Burgoo uses a pay-what-you-want model with a minimum pledge of $3 and a “suggested minimum” of $5 (it’s likely the $3 barely covers the cost of manufacturing and shipping, so feel free to be a little generous). Playable in as little as 15 minutes for 2-5 players, Burgoo takes its name from a traditional Midwestern communal stew and sees the players taking turns adding and removing ingredients from a communal pot, with certain actions triggering other players to follow suit (a la Race for the Galaxy or Puerto Rico).

 

As always, this is but a small, curated sampling of what Kickstarter has to offer this month. To voice your opinion on the selection and give a shout out to projects left behind, be sure to leave your comment below.

 

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