Gamefound Spring Feast

Andromeda’s Edge: Genesis

It’s back with an expansion and reprint. If you want to get the game and you missed it the first time, this is going to be more. This is going to add in three more factions and new ways of scoring. This is really going to be one of those games where you feel like you missed out the first time, you can get all the stuff plus the new here.

Follow Andromeda’s Edge: Genesis here.

Puppet Masters: Return to Bodega Bay Inn

This is based off of the movies. And you want to survive against some puppets. This is going to be a cooperative game which is great. I love the horror theme. And it won’t be the last horror game on the list. But this one doesn’t have a ton of information. For me it’s one that I’d love to see more about it before I decide if it’s for me or not.

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Terrorscape 2

This is a hidden movement game with great 3D elements. The location is different and the killers are different. There are going to be some mechanical updates. You can fight back as one of the options for winning the game. I like the idea of Terrorscape, but hidden movement is often harder to get to the table. And if you are the person who knows the game, you are often the one who is doing the hiding. But if you want more of the game, this is going to be a standalone and add more for you to play.

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Dawn of Madness Complete Collection

I want to back this one. But what I need to do is play Deep Madness first. But Dawn of Madness sounds amazing as well with a lot of narrative. I hope maybe by the time this comes to Gamefound I’ll be ready to back for it. It should be quick to production as well. But this is going to be a cooperative horror survival game which is a style and setting that I like.

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Borderlands: Mister Torgue’s Arena of Badassery 2

This is still going to be an arena boss battler sort of thing. I know it was on crowdfunding before. I’m not super interested in this one. I did love the video games, but this to me feels a bit more like just a big fighting system. And while conflict isn’t bad in a game, it’s not something that I just gravitate towards. The new boss battler element does make the game interesting for sure though.

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S.H.E.O.L. Midnight Odyssey

Another game that I already own, though this is the 2.0 version. I need to get my copy played. This is a campaign style game where there is a ton of darkness and you need to keep connected. And the game is a puzzle for how you play everything out to create paths through the darkness to your objectives. I won’t be backing this one, but it’ll be tempting. Really, what it makes me want to play the game.

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The Dark Carnival

This is a D&D campaign. I like the sounds of it, but it’s an RPG campaign so it’s going to be a pass for me. But this is supposed to be a mid-level story that you can drop into your campaign which is great. I think there is more need for that and it’s something that can help Dungeon Masters.

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Vampire The Masquerade – Palermo Conspiracies

This is another game on the Teberu system. I really like the sound of this and the Milan Uprising one that has already been backed and might be out already or coming out. I wish that it was out already if they are doing a new one. But this is going to give you that RPG feeling with the game maintaining a living world for you.

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Sniper Elite – Operation Kraken

This is another hidden movement. I know that people love the first printing. They are adding in expansions as well for it. I think it’s a game that sounds like a lot of fun, but again a hidden role game and that’s harder to get to the table. It doesn’t seem like it’s a super hard for the game to get played.

Sniper Elite – Operation Kraken on Gamefound here.

Neuroshima Hex

This is a board game, but this is going to be a video game of the board game. I believe that an app version has existed for a while, but this is going to bring it to more systems and possibly bring it back. I’m assuming that it’ll be updated to a more modern look as well. I thought that Neuroshima Hex is an interesting game but I didn’t love it.

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Trismegistus 2nd Edition

I never played the original. This is a complex game. It is suppose to be slightly more accessible. But there is a ton going on for it. It’s not one that still really interests me that much. But if someone were to have it I’d love to play it, either the new or old version of it.

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HiveMind Modular Hex Trays

These are modular movement trays. This is for miniature games which is not something that I do. So it’s going to be interesting to me. But if you like miniatures games, this might be something that is nice for you.

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The Isofarian Guard – Veilward

I knew about this one a week or so ago. This is going to give you a new campaign set in the world of The Isofarian Guard. What happens after you finish the base game, that’s the question. And it’s going to provide some new mechanisms for it as well. I like the sounds of it and it’s one that I hope I’ll be able to back as I enjoyed what I played of The Isofarian Guard.

Follow Veilward here on Gamefound.

Dale of Merchants: 10th Anniversary

This is going to be a preprint of Snowdale Design competitive deck-building game. It is going to be new content, it’ll be old content, and a new solo mode. If you like this game, this version might be an update to get it back to the table. Or if you haven’t gotten into the game, this might be a chance to jump into the game.

Follow Dale of Merchants 10th Anniversary here.

Ronin’s Revenge

This is from Dragori Games who made Taneres Adventures. This is going to be a boss battler game with no dice or luck. They say that it’s going to be Souls-like game, which I think means expect to die often. This could be a cool change. I won’t lie, this is a game that I’d love to back but also a company that I might worry about based off of tariffs and how big their games are. It’s going to be more than just a boss battler though, there is going to be elements as well that campaign feeling as well.

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Punica: Rome vs Carthage

This is a two player strategy game. I don’t love the looks of this game, not in terms of the art, that looks great, but it doesn’t look too exciting to me. It’s going to be that war game feel but it should play very quickly in that it’s a twenty minute game.

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Conquest of Paradise

Like the last game this one is from Phalanx Games. This again is going to be a war type of game, though this one is going to be more than that. This one gives you a fight over the seas to see how can reign supreme in the end. I don’t feel like this is the type of game that I’m going to jump into, but it is more interesting than Punica.

Follow Conquest of Paradise here.

Hood

Play as different factions in England with Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham. This is going to be a very asymmetric game. It sounds fun, but it is asymmetric and that means it might be harder to teach. I hope that it’s not to the point of Root, but I’m worried that it might be. And it’s a 90 to 120 minute game, so with a teach, does that means that it’s three hours?

Follow Hood from Phalanx games here.

Mesopotamia

This seems like a civilization game. And that sounds cool, kind of back in the history of the world. It’s going to be a 4x game as well. And it’s going to have a lot of different events that happen in the world and it’s going to change the landscape as well. This sounds fun, but as a 4x game, it’s going to be one that I pass on as I can’t see getting it played.

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Black Rose Wars – Revised Edition

This is a game that needs a 2nd edition. And I hope that it’s one that sounds interesting to me again. I think the theme has always worked for me. But as a game it was always just a lot to understand what was going on. So if they cleaned up the rule book this might be a chance to jump back into it. As I like the sound of being a mage and slinging spells to be the last one standing or the head of the lodge. If it is better, I’ll be looking at this one after the campaign.

Follow Black Rose Wars Revised Edition here.

Paperback Adventures Vol 2

This is going to be more for Paperback Adventures. I own the original stuff and I need to play it. But I haven’t played it yet, so I am not going to do it. This is going to be a solo game but now adding in multiplayer. Should this be one that I play on Malts and Meeples, yes it should be, so time to start learning another game. And I think it being a word game is really interesting as well. Multiplayer is fully cooperative as well.

Follow Paperback Adventures Vol 2 on Gamefound.

Final Thoughts

There are a ton of things. Though right now, like I said, I’m going to be a bit more hesitant to back some of these. The ones that excite me the most are Dawn of Madness. This is gone that I really believe that I’d love and I’ve been keeping an eye on it on eBay as well. But now this might be a smarter way to pick it up at hopefully a better price point.

Other than that one, I think that Paperback Adventures is going to be a game that I enjoy And if I enjoy this as well as one that I could play and enjoy with my wife. And the final one that I want to back is Veilward. I think that one is obvious. I played some of The Isofarian Guard and I really enjoyed it. So coming back and getting more makes sense for me. Especially because it’s more that doesn’t make the base game harder to get to the table.

Which one interests you the most?

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Normal Games

It is what it sounds like, these are your normal games. The Tickets to Ride, Pandemic, Catan, Carcassone, Monopoly, and any game that you can sit down, you play it once and you get the full game experience. These games are meant to be played in a 30 minute to 6 hours, if you’re playing Twilight Imperium or other big 4x games. But even with those games, you get the full experience of the games without having to do anything else. These are the type of games you’re probably going to get to the table most often, though, you’ll probably play a specific game less than in some of the other categories. Even as someone who likes some of the other types of games just as well, most of my collection is made up of one off games that I use for board game nights and just pulling out and playing a game.

Story Games

This one is the next step in, in my opinion. The others are larger in terms of what type of game they are as I’m going to define story games as any game that tells a story. Now, that can encompass other games, Gloomhaven has story elements, but is primarily a campaign style game, but definitely fits in this category as well. But games like Near and Far, Above and Below, Arabian Nights, all of those games have story and you can play them as a one off game. The story doesn’t have to be the only thing in the game, but it’s going to be a heavy focus for the game. These games can take 200 hours, like Gloomhaven but Near and Far can be played in a couple of hours or less. This is starting to get into those bigger games. Whereas what I call normal games can have story, again Above and Below and Arabian Nights are played in a single sitting, they are more focused on the story and telling the players a story than something like Pandemic where the game has theme and story as it plays, but it doesn’t provide story beyond how the game mechanically plays out.

Campaign Games

Next step up, and probably the second longest, or longest, of the games. These campaign games are going to be steeped in story. This is where a game like Gloomhaven or Sword and Sorcery falls. It’s going to be chaining scenarios together, telling you story as you go, and each time you play, you are possibly progressing the story and finding out more as to what is happening in the world and game that you’re playing. Some of them have simpler stories like the two I’ve mentioned, and some more more emerging stories like Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon, where you have some ideas of what you need to do at the start, but the ending of the game is less clear. This is going to push two things, first, you are going to see more character development and leveling up, so it leans into an RPG like feel. The other thing is that this is going to be more of a time commitment. Gloomhaven has been 200 or so hours for me, and Sword and Sorcery is probably nearing 24 hours or so of game play. There are going to be shorter campaign style games, Near and Far technically has a campaign of 6-7 games, I believe, never played it, but that’s 12-20 hours, let’s say for the whole campaign, but a lot of them are going to fall into that longer format because they want the RPG like feel for the game.

Legacy Games

This one is a sister to the Campaign Game. It is going to be a campaign game, but it adds in a destructive element. You are going to be adding stickers to cards, destroying cards, changing the map, and unlocking new things. Now, you might be able to go back and do it again, Charterstone, and play through the legacy experience again, but that requires an additional purchase. Legacy games are meant for you to play through the campaign once, generally, and then some of them allow you to continue to play the game without the legacy elements. Charterstone, Betrayal Legacy, and Clank! Legacy are all games that you can come back to and play again. Pandemic Legacy Season 1 and 2, however, once you’re done with them, you’re done with that game unless you put in a lot of extra effort to make it replayable. While campaign games raise the stakes because you are going further and further into a story so you don’t want to hit a point where you’ve lost and have to restart (and most do a good job of keeping you from having to do that), Legacy raises those stakes even higher. You’re probably always going to progress at some point in time in a legacy game, even if you didn’t win, but you don’t feel like you can go back and try again because of the legacy nature of the game, so even with less story the stakes can be higher. Charterstone is the only example, I have, of a legacy game where the stakes don’t feel that high.

RPG

This one I’m saving for last, because it moves away from a board game experience and into a role playing game. RPG is that step where you want that massive campaign, that massive legacy feeling and story experience. But you can also do a one-shot which would just be a 3-4 hour single sit down experience. So you can tailor and RPG to whatever you want, but, I personally prefer an RPG when it takes those bigger campaign, legacy and story elements and turns it into that epic experience which is guided by the GM and created by the GM and players. This can be the biggest time commitment of them all, because a campaign could, theoretically, take forever if you wanted to continue playing with the same characters in the same world and didn’t care about leveling up. But for me that’s part of the fun of the game is coming up with ways and reasons for your character to progress and grow through the game, and leveling up is part of that progression.

That’s an overview of what I’d consider to be the five types of games. As someone who likes all of them, I think that there should be a space for most of them on people’s shelves. If you haven’t jumped into RPG’s, consider it if you really enjoy campaign style games, because it’s a freeing experience in terms of being able to craft and create your own story with even less confines. If you love RPG’s, consider adding a campaign game, something like Aeon’s End Legacy or Clank Legacy would have that RPG bit of a feel to it as you level up characters (especially Clank Legacy which is based on Acquisitions Inc. a D&D game), but that would give you something new to try. And if you’ve only played that I termed normal games, try a story game, a stepping stone into a potentially more epic gaming experience and see how you like something that a little bit of that RPG flavor lightly added to it.

I don’t think that there’s a right type of game to play, or that you need to have all of them in your collection, but it’s certainly something you can consider for expanding your collection. I have something like 4-5 legacy games, 5-6 campaign games (which is a lot), 150 normal games, and probably a handful of story games that I’m forgetting about right now, and a ton of stuff for D&D. But that’s just what my collection is. Maybe you have a consistent group for D&D or any RPG so you just focus your collection on that, or maybe you just have changing groups over for playing board games, so you have more normal games, and that’s a great collection as well.

I’ll leave you with a question, do you have a preferred game style? For me, I love Legacy Games and Campaign games, though I play Normal Games more because we play more on a board game night, but I’ve played so much of some games. What do you play most of as well?

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Taking from the Oxford dictionary, the definition of a game is:

“a form of play or sport, especially a competitive one played according to rules and decided by skill, strength, or luck”

Oxford Dictionary

According to that definition, is my example of The Mind, a game?

Basics of the Mind are that you are trying to play cards in numerical order without talking, you can see your cards but there is no communication, so you have to guess, based off of feel when to play them down, and you’re trying to get through a certain number of rounds.

By the definition of a game, it doesn’t really take skill or strength, but it is very much luck. And, I think that something that I’d say for a definition of a game, it needs to have a win condition of some sort, I think that competitive is trying to cover for that, but I think a win condition is clearer, because cooperative board games are definitely games even though you’re not competing against someone. So, the Mind, by the technical definition is a game. But, when looking at the definition, it feels like it’s lacking a little bit of what is normally a game because it is just luck based.

So, maybe it’s a combo of a game and activity. I think that you could say that all games are activities. And with the Mind, because you’re mainly just guessing when to play down a card or when to use a special ability, it feels more like an activity to me. And it is a fun group activity as you try and use body language or other non-verbal queues and non-spoiling clues to get other people to play or to have a rush of playing when the numbers are close together. For me, the Mind is more of [redacted – come back for the review].

Is it bad that it might be more of an activity than it is a game? No. I think that many party games, they are best when they are treated more as an activity than a game. When you are playing something like Stipulations and trying to come up with an answer, it’s better to put down something that you think is funny. Same with Balderdash or a game like Cards Against Humanity or Apple to Apples. Even if it isn’t the best answer or the answer most likely to win, it’s a lot of fun just to create moments where you can laugh. And you play until laughing is just starting to fade, and you’ve had a great activity without caring about who wins because you can just be goofy. If you treat them as a game, you won’t get the in-joke answers, you’ll get people trying really hard, and that’s less fun. Yes, you might be removing the game aspect from it or going against the spirit of the rules, but it’s a party game, and a party is supposed to be fun. That’s why I have issues with “party” style games that don’t led themselves to being an activity because they can’t have the same level of fun. I’ll talk about what makes a good party game later as well.

So, with the Mind or party games, they can border on an activity, and that’s fine. I think what’s not fine and some of the reason why I’m writing this article, is because there can be a sort of snooty thumbing of the nose towards these games and the people who play them. Yes, it’s not that complex a game or activity, but are the people having fun, yes. Can it be a gateway for getting people into the heavier and more complex games? Yes. Will it always do that? No, and that’s fine. We want to encourage as many diverse gamers to join the hobby as possible as that will keep the hobby growing and from becoming stale. It might not be a 4X game, an 18XX game, a euro game, or an Ameritrash game, but that’s fine depending on the group, and if they don’t want to move on to those sorts of games, it might be that game group isn’t the right one for you, but don’t disparage someone for having fun in their own way.

What is a light game that you think works better or is more of an activity? Have you tried The Mind, and do you like it? Let me know in the comments below.

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