Tag Archives: Kickstarter

PuzzleNation Product Review: Hoard

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Stealing a dragon’s treasure is an iconic adventure trope, a classic test of a hero’s mettle or a thief’s craftiness. But do you have the skills and luck necessary to pilfer from a sleeping dragon and get away clean?

In the card game Hoard, you’ll get your chance to do exactly that as you and your fellow players maneuver around a sleeping dragon, trying to collect matching sets of treasure while defending yourself from or attacking your fellow plunderers, all with the ever-present threat of a slumbering fire-breathing beastie looming over you.

In fact, waking the dragon (or lulling it back to sleep) is a key part of the game play, since it could be to your advantage to wake the dragon after securing some treasure for yourself.

Hoard combines the resource management aspect of numerous other card games with the luck and wherewithal of Memory. As you move around the board, you have the choice to look at one of the dragon’s treasure cards. You can either take that card, or you can leave it (and hope you remember what you found there, in case you need it later). If you leave the card, you’ll instead draw a random card from the deck.

You might find helpful treasure, a sword to attack with, a shield to defend with, a way to wake the dragon, or a way to soothe the dragon. The variety of cards makes the relatively small playing area a rich field, rife with possibilities.

Wait a minute, why would you WANT to wake a dragon?

Simple. You play for several rounds, and each round can only end in one of three ways:
A.) The last card from the deck is pulled
B.) A player begins a turn with no cards in their hand
C.) The dragon wakes up

So, if you’ve secured a good bit of treasure and you think you’ll win that round, it’s to your advantage to wake the dragon and end the round before the other players can catch up.

Only the players with the top two point totals (amassed from making treasure sets and other related card patterns, similar to Go Fish) receive victory points at the end of the round.

The first player to five victory points wins the game.

The strategy involved is what makes this a terrific game for puzzle fans. You need to make sure that you keep finding matching sets of treasure (both by remembering what cards are around the dragon and seeing which cards you get from the deck), defend your treasure from the other players, and avoid getting outfoxed in manipulating the dragon.

The mechanics of the game are simple, but the sheer number of options available to the player — as well as the element of chance involved — make for a very replayable game experience. One round, the dragon could be your greatest ally, while another time, the dragon wakes at the worst possible moment for you and your meager treasure hoard.

A great game for families, casual players, and hardcore board gamers alike, Hoard is gorgeous, well-executed, and great fun.

Hoard is a Cheeky Parrot Games product, available online now!

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Piece of Cake Crosswords!

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Crosswords are great. Here at PuzzleNation, we know that better than most.

But they can be daunting. All those interlocking words, crissing and crossing in a tight grid, and it always seems like there’s some obscure vocabulary, some archaic terms, some words that appear in crosswords and nowhere else.

What is a newcomer, or a casual solver, to do? How can they get into crosswords?

Well, guess what? Constructor Patrick Blindauer has got you covered.

He’s running a Kickstarter campaign called Piece of Cake Crosswords, and he’s turning his puzzle-making expertise toward making crosswords that will be accessible to new solvers! No tricky cluing, no out-of-date pop culture references, just great puzzles designed to be both easy and fair.

We’re talking one 15×15 crossword per week for an entire year! 52 crosswords, all designed and clued by a top-flight puzzler. And the pledge tiers for a one-year subscription start at only $29! That’s almost 50 cents a puzzle! What a deal.

Higher pledges include extras like puzzlefests (themed puzzle sets created by Blindauer), video lectures on crossword creation, and even custom puzzles made especially for you!

You can check out all the details on Kickstarter here!

(Sorry, though — there’s no actual cake.)

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It’s Follow-Up Friday: Kickstarter Roundup 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 crowdfunding.

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First, let’s talk about Herbaceous. Ed and the Herbaceous team were hoping for $6500 to make the game a reality, and they absolutely crushed that goal!

The final total was a staggering $59,032! Congrats to everyone involved, and kudos to all the PuzzleNationers that contributed!

And in the spirit of such marvelous Kickstarter success, let’s take a look at four very different projects that might appeal to puzzle fans and game enthusiasts!

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I missed my chance to try out Originz: The Superpowered Card Game at the CT FIG event earlier this year — though you can try it out at the CT FIG mid-year event this weekend in Newington, CT! — but I definitely like what I’ve seen from their Kickstarter campaign.

In this deck-building game, you try to equip your villain or hero with the best mix of powers imaginable to keep your foes at bay! This accessible game is richly illustrated and detailed, a sure-fire hit with any fans of superheroics in your household.

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If you’re looking for a more traditional style of puzzling, there are only a few days left to get in on the ground floor of LightBox, a Rubik’s-style light-up puzzle box.

By rotating and rearranging the layers of plastic that form the cube, you will illuminate different layers and create different patterns of light! Whether you’re solving to create a particular pattern or to shut the LightBox off entirely, you’re sure to work your brain into knots with this curious puzzle box.

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And speaking of short deadlines, there are only a few days left to contribute to Word Domination, an intriguing mix of Scrabble-style spelling and a strategy card game.

The concept is devilishly simple: by spelling words, you acquire artifacts to help you in your criminal escapades. The mix of tactical spelling — sometimes, shorter words have more value than longer words — with the roguish qualities of an evildoer allow for all sorts of gameplay possibilities.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen these two puzzle-game formats combined like this before, and the result could be something great.

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Our fourth and final project today has the most potential, simply because of its design. It’s the PinBox 3000, and it’s a foundation for designing, decorating, and constructing your very own pinball game.

Merging DIY possibilities with a classic form of game play seems like a no-brainer, and I can’t believe we haven’t seen something like this on the market before. This is the perfect community builder, and I can foresee forums and Pinterest pages popping up all over, as fans and creators share their unique designs. What an awesome palette to work with!

Hopefully one or more of these projects piques your interest, my fellow puzzlers and PuzzleNationers! I wish all of these creators the best of luck in shepherding their brainchildren toward success!

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Herbaceous: A Card Game That Grows on You!

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I’m always on the lookout for new board games or card games that I think will interest the PuzzleNation readership, and today, I think I’ve got something special.

Many games center around combat, territory acquisition, player elimination, and other aggressive forms of gameplay that can alienate younger players and families alike. But what if there was a game where the toughest decision is what to plant in your garden?

Fellow puzzlers and PuzzleNationers, I give you…Herbaceous.

You have herb cards and container cards, and your goal is to collect the best combination of herbs to pot in your private garden. You do this by drawing herb cards and either planting them in your private garden or placing them in the community garden, where they might be snatched up by other players hoping to bolster their own private gardens.

It’s a simple, accessible game mechanic that makes it perfect for players of all ages, quick to learn but offering enough variety and strategy to give it plenty of replay value.

I reached out to Eduardo Baraf, who is part of the creative team and managing the Kickstarter, to discuss this intriguing family-friendly game.

What separates Herbaceous from other games?

Herbaceous stands out because it has accessible, welcoming gameplay that provides great player moments and dynamics. Certainly the art and subject matter of Herbaceous also grabs people’s attention.

As both a game designer and a game enthusiast, what aspect of the game most appeals to you?

The ease with which I can play it with anyone in my family and extended family. Cousins, Aunts, Grandparents, etc.

Ed backs up his claims of inviting all-ages gameplay by having his mother explain how to play the game:

And best of all, the game is already funded! So if you donate, you’ll be contributing to a game with stretch goals already in mind and plenty of support. Also, given Ed’s successful track record with crowdfunded campaigns, I have great confidence in this game reaching many satisfied supporters and customers.

[Brief Kickstarter explanation for the uninitiated: Although there are no guarantees when it comes to Kickstarter or other crowdfunding platforms, donating to already-funded projects gives you a much-higher chance of receiving the finished product in a timely fashion, since you’ve already crossed one of the major thresholds — securing the minimum funding to make the game — eliminating the chance for disappointment that the project might be cancelled because it didn’t make its minimum funding goal.]

So if you’re looking for a fun, non-combative game to play with family and friends, Herbaceous just might be what you’re looking for.

Click here for all of the details on the game and the Kickstarter campaign!

Thank you to Ed for taking the time out to answer our questions! Best of luck with the game!

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

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A Puzzly Success Story: The Codex Silenda

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In the past, I’ve covered plenty of puzzly Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns that I thought might interest my fellow puzzlers and PuzzleNationers.

Today, I’m not so much recommending a campaign — since it’s pretty much closed right now — but I do want to share the story of that campaign, because I think they’ve learned from the mistakes of other campaigns and they’re doing things right.

So let’s talk about the Codex Silenda project.

Codex Silenda: The Book of Puzzles is a series of mechanical puzzles, each of which unlocks the next “page” until you get to the final puzzle, which reveals a prize. It’s an awesome concept, and all of the photos of the 5-page Codex look gorgeous.

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Now, there are several noteworthy things about this particular Kickstarter campaign. The first is that the puzzle project funded in a day, and within two days, every tier that allowed you to receive a complete Codex was filled up. By day three, even the tier that stated you’d receive the Codex disassembled and you’ve have to put it together yourself was filled up.

So in 72 hours, if you wanted the Codex for yourself, you had to settle for the lower tier allowing you to receive a single page of the Codex of your choosing, or you had to set yourself for a long wait until the Kickstarter campaign had been fulfilled and the team had moved on to accepting orders once more.

That brings me to the second noteworthy thing about this campaign: their patience and forethought.

Many Kickstarter campaigns that turn out to be more successful than expected become victims of their success, accepting more and more backing from supporters, adding loads of stretch goals to fulfill, and basically getting caught up in the excitement of being a well-funded runaway success.

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[Image courtesy of expertrain.com.]

Unfortunately, those campaigns are often overwhelmed once they finally realize the monumental task ahead of them: producing the product for LOADS of supporters, becoming stressed by delays, missteps, and the ever-looming deadline they promised during the campaign. I’ve seen it time and time again, even with well-staffed, supremely organized campaigns. Things happen.

But the Codex team nipped that possibility in the bud early, declaring that they would NOT be adding additional tiers. Although this would mean losing out on more funding AND potentially disappointing interested customers, they wanted to fully commit to the supporters they already had and not overtax their team.

It’s an act of patience and restraint that will serve them well, even if it did leave latecomers to the campaign like me a little disheartened.

And that brings me to the third noteworthy aspect of this campaign: planning for the future.

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[Image courtesy of tibco.com.]

Now that they had secured funding and already turned their eyes toward production, they offered an olive branch to all the interested supporters who had found them after that amazing 72-hour launch to success. You see, one of the few stretch goals they had built into the campaign were 6th and 7th pages to add to the Codex, which would be exclusive to the Kickstarter campaign.

That means that the Codex produced for customers after the campaign would only be 5 pages, and latecomers would miss out. The team thought that was unfair, so they’ve offered a unique solution: an upgrade voucher.

By adding a bit more to your donation for one of the non-Codex tiers, you would receive a voucher proving you were a Kickstarter supporter. That way, when the Kickstarter campaign is complete, all those orders are filled, and the team begins accepting orders from customers, that voucher entitles you to a Codex with the Kickstarter-exclusive 6th and 7th pages.

Now that is smart marketing and customer service.

I look forward to seeing where the Codex Silenda team goes from here, and how the campaign proceeds once they move into formal production and eventually, product delivery. With forethought and planning like this, I think they’ll be a big success.

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!

It’s Follow-Up Friday: Kickstarter Roundup 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 crowdfunding!

[Image courtesy of The Startup Garage.]

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 could use your attention.

The first is the strategy game Sovrano.

Sovrano is a tactical game in the spirit of chess where you compete with your opponent to score points by capturing one or both of the towers in the center row of the board and/or by escorting your emperor to the throne at the center of the board. With only 11 game pieces apiece, this multi-tiered game is simple to learn but contains enough depth and nuance to keep players interested.

Although supporting Sovrano is a bit more expensive than the average game’s Kickstarter levels, it’s worth noting that each game is hand-made by the father-and-son team behind the game, and the craftsmanship looks gorgeous.

A bit more complex and cutthroat than Sovrano, Summit is a strategy game that’ll test your speed, cunning, and karma. It’s kind of like The Oregon Trail, but with other wagons racing you.

Summit combines path building (by laying triangular tiles on the mountain map), mechanics to help or hinder opponents (inspiring alliances and encouraging betrayals in equal measure), resource management, and an element of luck to create an intriguing racing game where players compete to climb AND descend a mountain before their opponents do.

On the simpler side of things, we have Hoard, a test-your-luck card game all about hedging your bet to sneak as much treasure as possible away from a sleeping dragon before it awakes.

With elements of Memory (remembering which treasure cards are hidden where), chain-solving (doing your best to combine where to move on the board with the cards in your hand and the treasures you’ve already nabbed) and risk management (do you try to wake the dragon now to secure your treasure, or do you hedge your bet and try to grab more before someone else wakes it?), Hoard is a quick-playing family-friendly experience that could be a great gateway game for more involved games later.

Our final game today, Knuckle Sammich, is far, far goofier than the other three, but it’s a project near and dear to my heart, because it’s a spinoff of one of my favorite quick-and-silly role-playing games, Kobolds Ate My Baby.

Now, for the uninitiated, a bit of backstory: kobolds are among the first creatures you usually encounter in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, because they’re easy for even the greenest of heroes to defeat. They’re basically cannon fodder. So it’s great fun to have a game centered around playing one of these easily crushed minions, stealing food for your king and being generally mischievous.

And now they’re launching a card game all about eating sandwiches before they run out…or before you become lunch yourself! It’s guaranteed to be glorious chaos.

These are four intriguing and very entertaining projects, all loaded with potential, and I hope you consider contributing 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.

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!