Tag Archives: Crowdsourcing

Kickstarter Round-up!

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International TableTop Day is this Saturday, a day where we celebrate getting together with family and friends to play games! Board games, card games, role-playing games, puzzles…anything that involves gathering in person and having fun around a table fits the bill!

But we simply can’t wait until Saturday — plus the office is closed that day — so we’re hosting our PuzzleNation’s TableTop Day event in-house TODAY! And I figured what better day could there be for a round-up of puzzly crowdfunding campaigns marking some of the newest and most intriguing projects in the puzzle-game industry today!

I’ve covered various campaigns for board games, card games, and puzzle projects across the Kickstarter and Indiegogo crowdfunding platforms over the years, and today I’d like to share three more that could use your attention.

The first is the strategy game Tak.

Tak is a collaboration between game designer James Ernest, head honcho of Cheapass Games and Hip Pocket Games, and author Patrick Rothfuss, creator of the Kingkiller Chronicle series, to bring to life a game featured in Rothfuss’s novel The Wise Man’s Fear.

The premise sounds simple: build a road of pieces connecting opposite sides of the board. By using some pieces as parts of your road and others as walls to block your opponent, this mix of chess, Stratego, and Go is all about strategy. Plus, the game is adaptable, playable on square boards as small as 3×3 and as large as 8×8.

This is a new pub game that feels like a timeless classic, and it looks perfect for puzzlers of all ages.

Now let’s move from the pub to outer space with another Kickstarter campaign, Avoid the Void.

This is a different sort of strategy game, since it’s all about outlasting your opponents, not completing a task first. In Avoid the Void, whole sectors of space are being replaced with black holes, and everyone is scrambling to gather resources and elude these hungry death traps.

You’ve got an ever-changing gameboard, intriguing alien races (including one resembling a piece of cake), and all the reason in the world to deceive, outmaneuver, and betray your fellow players, just so you can stay in the universe a little while longer.

This is a game designed for replayability, allowing you to indulge in all of the diabolical selfishness of games like Monopoly, but without the huge time commitment. After all, the universe is collapsing and there’s no time to waste!

And speaking of replayability, the makers of this last Kickstarter campaign are known for puzzle games with high replay factor. Let’s talk about Pyramid Arcade from Looney Labs.

We normally talk about Looney Labs card games like Fluxx or Loonacy, but their original product line revolved around the Looney Pyramids system: various games you can play with their signature colored pyramids.

Now, they’re launching Pyramid Arcade, covering TWENTY-TWO different games and encompassing 90 pyramids of various colors. It’s their largest release ever, and with all the variants and mini-games they’ve created for these game pieces over the years, this promises to be a game set with endless possibilities.

Pattern-matching games, chess- and Tic-Tac-Toe-inspired games, bluffing games, strategy games, and even a tower-building game…Pyramid Arcade literally has something for everyone.

These are three intriguing and very worthy projects, and I hope you contribute to one or more of them. As someone who has become a regular donor to various Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns, I am proud to have funded some marvelous new ideas and watched them take shape over the months that followed.

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PuzzleNation Product Review: Schrodinger’s Cats

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Even if you don’t know the science behind it, you’ve probably heard of Schrodinger’s cat at some point in your life. If you haven’t, let me give you the short short version: there’s a box with a cat in it, and a substance that may or may not release inside the box and kill the cat.

So until you open the box, there’s no way of knowing whether the cat is alive or not. Schrodinger posited that, since we can’t know which is the case, both are true until the box is opened. It’s essentially a thought experiment which delves far deeper into quantum mechanics and particle physics than I’m going to in this review.

But the idea that someone created a card game based on the concept of Schrodinger’s cat is not only audacious, but pretty impressive. (And the puns are just the icing on the cake.)

[Some of the cat physicists in the game: Sir Isaac Mewton,
Sally Prride, Madame Purrie, and Neil deGrasse Tabby.]

Schrodinger’s Cats was funded through a Kickstarter campaign last year, and it’s the brainchild of Heather Wilson, Heather O’Neill, and Chris O’Neill. A mix of bluffing, deduction, and wagering, this game combines Name That Tune-style bravado and strategy with Poker-style game play.

Each player is a cat scientist forming hypotheses on how many boxes contain live cats, dead cats, or nothing at all. (While Schrodinger is away, of course. As the old saying goes, when the scientist’s away, the cats will play. Or something like that.)

Every player receives one box card for each player in the game (so if there are three players in the game, each player receives three box cards), as well as one cat scientist card.

Once the cards are dealt, players look at their box cards and see what each box contains, hiding this info from the other players. Then the players begin hypothesizing. They wager on how many of each result are in ALL of the boxes on the board. So, in the game layout above, there are nine boxes, and each scientist has to wager what’s in all the boxes.

But instead of starting with a high guess and then wagering lower totals (as you would in Name That Tune), you start low in Schrodinger’s Cats and wager upward. Scientists can also affect the wagering by “showing findings” — revealing one or all of their own boxes to either prove their hypothesis or make the other players doubt their own — or by swapping out some boxes. (Each cat scientist card also allows for a one-time-use special action for a player, which can also prove useful.)

When a player either refuses to wager higher or challenges another player’s hypothesis by yelling “Prove it!”, all of the boxes are revealed and the hypothesis is proven or debunked (meaning the player stays in the game or leaves). After multiple experiments (rounds of play), one character remains and wins the game (and an honorary doctorate from Cat Tech University).

What I enjoyed most about this game (other than all the pseudo-scientific jargon involved in playing the game) was the wagering, bluffing, and reading of opponents that is integral to the game play. With so few possible cards to reveal (only four, in varying quantities, as opposed to 13 different cards across four suits in poker), it’s not nearly as challenging as the classic card game, but offers a lot of similar game mechanics.

It’s great fun to try to outwit or read your fellow players in order to make the best hypothesis, and that’s a sort of puzzling that is often left behind in puzzle games. Often, you’re so busy trying to achieve a certain goal or acquire points that you stop actively interacting with the other players; but in Schrodinger’s Cats, a lot of puzzling and game play takes place in the actions and reactions of the other players. It’s a delightfully social game.

Although you can play with as few players as two or as many as six, I recommend playing with at least four characters to keep the game moving and interesting. Between raising hypotheses, showing findings, and trying to puzzle out what your fellow players are hiding, the more uncertainty you can introduce to the game, the better.

Schrodinger’s Cats is available from 9th Level Games and can be found here.

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It’s Follow-Up Friday: Schools and Spheres edition!

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Welcome to Follow-Up Friday!

By this time, you know the drill. Follow-Up Friday is a chance for us to revisit the subjects of previous posts and bring the PuzzleNation audience up to speed on all things puzzly.

And today, I’d like to return to the subject of Kickstarter philanthropy!

[Image credit: for-preneur]

I’ve written about crowdfunding a lot in this blog, because over the last few years, platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo have changed how many puzzles and games are created, funded, and brought to market.

There’s a virtual board game and card game renaissance stemming from these websites, and many puzzle constructors are bypassing traditional publishing formats and taking their puzzle suites and projects straight to the audience this way.

But there’s also the opportunity to give back to your community in meaningful ways.

I recently stumbled across the Kickstarter campaign for StrataSphere, a strategy puzzle game from Family Games America that really caught my eye.

Like a next-level version of Connect Four and KerPlunk, StrataSphere challenges you to place your sliding tabs in various slots around the cube, then use them to drop your spheres to the bottom layer first.

But what most intrigued me about the project wasn’t the puzzle itself, but one of the crowdfunding options being offered. Instead of just pledging for a copy of the game for yourself, you could pledge a little more money and donate a copy of the game in your name to a school of your choosing. Puzzle philanthropy.

I reached out to the team at FGA to find out more about the project, and had the opportunity to chat with Paulette Hall, communications director for FGA.

Where did the idea for StrataSphere come from?

The game was originally envisioned and developed by German designer Claudia Herz, who originally named it BallCube. Claudia remembers that after spending time sketching and offering the idea to other game publishers she finally made a handmade sample of acrylic glass and presented it at a trade-show not too far from her home.

The reaction and feedback was overwhelming. People wanted to know everything about the game and know where it can be purchased. This is what encouraged her to pursue the project. With a combination of inspiration from Claudia and outer-space, we renamed the game StrataSphere 2.0.

For people unfamiliar with FGA, what sort of puzzles and puzzle-games are your bread and butter? Is StrataSphere a traditional FGA-style puzzle, or is it a new direction for you?

FGA’s tag-line, Learning Through Laughter, has been been incorporated into all of our gift, game, and puzzle products since being established in 1987. StrataSphere 2.0 is not so much a puzzle but a strategy tabletop game that is a more contemporary modern addition to our line of products.

Our more popular items include eco-friendly wooden games and puzzles like Cathedral, Don’t Break The Bottle, and our wood and wire puzzles. While this strategy game is new to FGA, FGA is not new to strategy games.

The option for supporters to donate an additional copy to a school of their choosing is one I’ve never seen before, and I’m surprised more Kickstarter campaigns haven’t utilized it. Is this the first product that has incorporated this sort of program? Is this a long-term goal for FGA going forward?

FGA helped raise funds for actor Ted Danson’s American Oceans Campaign in the late ’80s and early ’90s with their environmental games and puzzles such as Endangered and Colorful Kingdom. A percentage of sales was also given to the ASPCA.

Donations of FGA products go out yearly to schools and organizations. A big part of FGA is our ability to give back, and we wanted to start 2016 with a campaign that will help us continue to do that. Our students are our future, and the state of our school systems has geared our focus of this campaign to get valuable learning material back into our schools and into their hands.

I think this is not only a really exciting puzzle game, but a worthwhile cause as well. You can check out all the details on the StrataSphere Kickstarter page. They’re more than halfway to their funding goal, and I sincerely hope they make it there and beyond.

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The Crystal Maze returns!

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[Host Richard O’Brien tempts you into testing your mettle in The Crystal Maze.]

Crowdfunding strikes again!

This time around, fan support and puzzly outreach has resurrected The Crystal Maze, a classic puzzly TV show from across the pond.

From 1990 to 1995, contestants would team up to overcome physical and mental obstacles under a tight time limit as they tackled the show’s signature themed zones, including an Aztec one, a medieval one, and an industrial one, earning crystals for every completed puzzle or activity.

Those crystals could then be converted into time allotted to confront the final challenge: the Crystal Maze itself.

The Indiegogo campaign raised nearly double what the team of designers was asking for! But, instead of a TV show, The Crystal Maze is returning as a fully interactive experience for the public, tasking you with completing these challenges yourself.

With the recent popularity explosion of Escape the Room experiences, this seems like a fantastically entertaining next step in immersive puzzle-solving.

[A computer-generated mock-up of the new Aztec zone.]

Not only are there actors to play various roles within each zone, but host Richard O’Brien is returning to “welcome guests in a time-honored fashion.”

Tickets are on sale now for the March 15, 2016, launch of The Crystal Maze experience in London. You can book individually (£50 on weekdays, £60 on weekends), sign up with a full team (8 people), or book an entire session (32 people, since 4 teams can run through each session). Each session runs approximately 90 minutes.

Hopefully you’ll do better than this player:

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It’s Follow-Up Friday: Kickstart Halloween edition!

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By this time, you know the drill. Follow-Up Friday is a chance for us to revisit the subjects of previous posts and bring the PuzzleNation audience up to speed on all things puzzly.

And in today’s post, I’m returning to the subject of puzzly crowdfunding campaigns!

Two weeks ago, I spread the word about several puzzly Kickstarter campaigns that I thought might interest my fellow PuzzleNationers!

But with Halloween fast approaching, two more campaigns with a more humorously macabre style caught my eye.

The first is Kill Doctor Lucky, by our friends at Cheapass Games.

In this relaunch of the original board game, players compete to dispatch Doctor Lucky before the other competitors, but to do so, you must sneak around Lucky Mansion, acquiring weapons and securing a solid hiding place.

You see, not only are your fellow players conspiring to ruin your plans, but Doctor Lucky is surprisingly difficult to kill. (They don’t call him Doctor Lucky for nothing, after all!)

This is a delightfully tongue-in-cheek take on whodunit games like Clue, and 19 years of playtesting since the original release have resulted in tighter rules, more flexible gameplay, and a wickedly fun puzzle experience.

And Kill Doctor Lucky has already blasted past its initial goal, so if you support it, you’re guaranteed to get the game!

The second game is Don’t Die, the card game where death isn’t the end of the world, it’s just inconvenient.

Players in Don’t Die take turns pulling from a deck of hazard cards that could easily kill them, and try to avoid dying by passing cards to the other players or rolling the dice to escape that particular demise.

The game is over when one player has died ten times, and whichever “surviving” player has the fewest deaths is the winner!

I am a huge fan of games that play with established conventions, and a game where dying is just part of the play experience is a terrific twist. (It reminds me a bit of Gloom that way, both in some of its mechanics and in its lighthearted take on a grim subject.)

Don’t Die is more than a third of the way toward being funded, so it could definitely use your support.

Both of these games look like great fun, and represent the board game and card game crowdfunding renaissance we’re experiencing right now. I highly recommend taking a little time to surf the puzzle and game pages of Kickstarter and Indiegogo, because you never know what terrific and unexpected products you might help bring to life.

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It’s Follow-Up Friday: Puzzlesaurus Kickstarterus edition!

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Welcome to Follow-Up Friday!

By this time, you know the drill. Follow-Up Friday is a chance for us to revisit the subjects of previous posts and bring the PuzzleNation audience up to speed on all things puzzly.

And in today’s post, I’m returning to the subject of puzzly crowdfunding campaigns!

I’ve covered various campaigns for board games, card games, and puzzle projects across the Kickstarter and Indiegogo crowdfunding platforms over the years, and today I’d like to share a few more that deserve your attention.

These are some of the cards for Scrimish, a card game so simple and elegant that I cannot believe I haven’t seen this game mechanic before.

Essentially, it’s a chess match with cards. You set up your five piles of cards face down in front of you, hiding a crown card in one of your piles. Then, you play cards against your opponent’s piles in the hopes of revealing his crown card. So strategy, rather than luck, is the name of the game here.

There’s only a day or two left in this campaign, and it’s already blown past its initial goal, so if you donate, at the very least, you’re guaranteed a copy or two of the game. (Sometimes, this is one of the advantages of jumping onto a Kickstarter bandwagon at the eleventh hour.)

Did you know that more dinosaur skeletons were discovered by just two scientists — Cope and Marsh — than by anyone else in history? And did you know that they got so competitive with one another that they actually began damaging dig sites and blowing up fossils in order to sabotage each other?

This ridiculous and amazing period in history is the source material for The Great Dinosaur Rush, a game where you attempt to build a complete dinosaur skeleton while stealthily (and sometimes, not-so-stealthily) combating your opponents’ efforts to do the same.

I’ve been waiting months for this Kickstarter to launch, ever since I first heard about the game, and now it’s well on its way to being funded. Why not take history into your own hands and mess with your friends and fellow scientists while you’re at it?

There are so many more I could cover, all with varying degrees of puzzliness. There’s the card game Master Thief (where you compete with fellow players to rob a museum), the magnetic jigsaw-style Enigma Orbs, a Cards Against Humanity-inspired bounty hunting card game called Skiptrace, and Covalence, a board game where you race to figure out molecular structures!

Heck, there’s even a collection of drinking glasses that link together (called, appropriately enough, Cupzzle)!

I highly recommend taking a little time to surf the puzzle and game pages of Kickstarter and Indiegogo, because you never know what terrific and unexpected products you might help bring to life.

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on everything PuzzleNation!

You can also share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and explore the always-expanding library of PuzzleNation apps and games on our website!