Get your birds a-thawin’ as we head into a Geek Haven November. Many of the projects this month struggle with the very classification of “game,” but that doesn’t stop them from existing, just waiting to pique your nerdly interest. And pique they shall, with themes that run the gamut from mask-faced slashers to slash fanfiction, from sprinting dinos to chugging engines. Yes, Kickstarter has delivered yet again.
slash: romance without boundaries: If you’ve played any variation on Apples to Apples, Cards Against Humanity, Who Would Win, etc., then you know the drill here. The only distinction is that in slash, instead of competing to produce the funniest/most offensive/deadliest pair of concepts, players are attempting to convince a capricious, romantically-minded Matchmaker that the card they hold in their hand (which could be anything from Michelle Obama to the Monolith from 2001) is the One True Pairing with the Matchmaker’s card. Silly and with null strategic value, but that would be missing the point of these types of games, which can be an excellent social lubricant or just an excuse to laugh until your jaws hurt. Doing it with stereotype-smashing non-heteronormative cross-genre romantic fanfiction? Even better.
Night In The Woods: Speaking of “types of games”…after watching the trailer for Night in the Woods, I have no idea what type of game it’s supposed to be, or even if it’s a game at all. There are shades of Donnie Darko, anthropomorphized as a big-eyed cat who seems to spend half the game running through town smashing mailboxes and at least part of it as a ghost. There are hints of political satire in the apocalyptic tone–“The world is changing, things are ending, and the future is uncertain”–and the tone of wonder in the speech bubble, “Look! Jobs!” There are surreal elements, such as a giant flying fish that leaps between high-rises at night and a mysterious something lurking deep in the woods. And while I’m not sure what all that adds up to, I do know that I want it very, very badly.
Camp Grizzly: On the other hand, it’s instantly apparent what genre Camp Grizzly from Ameritrash Games falls under, and even which particular films it’s aping. And that’s all right by me, since when it comes to ’70s and ’80s slasher flicks, the campier, the better. Camp Grizzly is a cooperative survival horror board game for 1-6 players in which a group of terrified camp counselors must protect their campers, and themselves, from Otis, a maniacal killer in a bear mask. The available artwork shows a bloody thorough appreciation for genre tropes, and the tone of the game can be tweaked by the inclusion of any one of five planned expansions: Rated R increases the gore and the body count, Spin the Bottle brings on the hanky-panky, while Jump the Bear includes all of the ideas deemed too awful to make it into the base game, such as an appearance by Doobie the Dog Sleuth.
Shadows of Brimstone: Does anybody remember Darkwatch, starring train robber turned vampire hunter Jericho Cross? What about Jonah Hex? If so, you might not be terribly surprised to hear of Shadows of Brimstone, which gets Lovecraft all up in your Wild West. From Flying Frog Productions, publishers of Last Night on Earth (the Zombie Game), A Touch of Evil (the Supernatural Game), and Conquest of Planet Earth (the Space Alien Game), Shadows of Brimstone is their latest glossy, overproduced, genre-savvy board game. Which isn’t always a bad thing–if you like games oozing with flavor and story, particularly the Weird West combination of saloon girls and serpentmen, Shadows of Brimstone is sure to deliver. There are already two starter sets available, giving access to two uniquely terrifying dimensions, with more planned, and they can all be mixed and matched as you fancy, so if you like collecting miniatures and weaving pulp fiction tales, better saddle up, pardner.
Roll Through the Ages: The Iron Age: Like the era it is representing, the history of Roll Through the Ages: The Iron Age is a twisted one with a complex genealogy. It’s a follow-up to Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age, a dice-based homage to the immense, strategic historical epic board game Through The Ages, which itself contained nods to Sid Meier’s PC series Civilization. Instead of taking on the whole of human history in one three-hour epic, Roll Through the Ages focuses on one era at a time,attempting to condense the same civilization-building flavor into a 30-minute game composed almost entirely of dice and peg-boards. Bronze Age was designed by legendary cooperative game designer Matt Leacock, of Pandemic fame, while for Iron Age, the reins have been handed to Tom Lehmann, designer of Race for the Galaxy–a pedigree that proves he’s capable of producing an addictive engine-building game that’s over in a half hour or less. Yeah, I said it was complicated, didn’t I? Luckily, the game isn’t, but that doesn’t mean it’s not fun–check out the page for yourself to see what’s up.
Dino Run 2: Returning to digital terrain, we have Dino Run 2, sequel to the impeccably detailed prehistoric racing game slash platformer Dino Run. Allow me to geek out for a minute and say that for me, this is the most exciting Kickstarter project of the month, no bones about it, which makes the slow crawl toward its funding goal that much more appalling. Look, do you like dinosaurs? Who doesn’t? Any fan of the prehistoric beasties will appreciate the tremendously lifelike, nuanced animations achieved by the blocky, colorful 2D pixels, as well as the ability, in the sequel, to play as your choice of dinosaur species, from Archaeopteryx to Pachycephalosaur. Meanwhile, fans of old-school platformers such as Sonic the Hedgehog will love Dino Run‘s branching paths and sense of speed as you hitch pterodactyl rides, balance on rolling boulders and surf a pyroclastic wall of pure extinction. There’s also the doomsurf chiptune soundtrack to get excited about. If you’re still not convinced, you can ENTER PLANET D for a free-to-play, condensed version of the original game, then throw all your money at Pixeljam, those lovable bastards.
Trainz Simulator: A New Era: Engineered for a completely different sort of nerd, Trainz Simulator: A New Era is not just the latest in the “simulator games” craze of titles such as Farming Simulator and Euro Truck Simulator; it actually preceded many of them, with the first Trainz game, in 2001, already earning a reputation for cutting-edge realism in both the look and handling of the trains it contained. A New Era wants to push that realism to an entirely new level–watch the video to hear about the way the engine’s power, tractive effort and rolling resistance are combined to determine your train’s acceleration and speed. The graphics are getting a boost, too, with HDR and full-world shadows. If you’re a locomotives enthusiast, it seems that this is a train you won’t want to miss.
Touch Board: Interactivity Everywhere: Finally, we have Touch Board, which is less a game and more a new platform through which games, or any other type of interactive element, can be made. Put simply, Touch Board is a moddable soundboard that can connect easily to any conductive material–including the conductive paint marketed by the same company, Bare Conductive. Combined, the range of uses is virtually limitless, as the video conveys–anything from a midi instruments, interactive educational toys, motion-sensing alarms and beyond. It’s based on an Arduino Leonardo with a capacitive touch chip, an mp3 player and a LiPo battery charger, whatever that means. More importantly, it could make real-world platforming obstacle courses a (virtual) reality. You heard it here first!
As always, this is but a taste of the gaming projects Kickstarter currently has on offer. To suggest a project for a future article or voice your opinion on the current lineup, be sure to leave a comment below.
