Kickstarters Not To Miss: July 2013

by Randy
@coffeeswiller

Hello there! You guys know how we love Kickstarter, right? Well, we've have the opportunity to try out a couple games on Kickstarter right now. Ready for some recommendations? Let's kick it off!

Fire and Flora

The Growing Up Gamers crew love games that teach something. 'Educational Games' have been around for a while, in one form or another. In my experience, though, most that fall into this category only educate or entertain, but not both. Tim Handley's Fire and Flora did both for us: it delivered interesting play, and we learned a bit about fire ecology. Nifty, huh?

Overall, the game is pretty simple: you try to acquire lands and plant native species, and earn victory points for doing so. Land is purchased with coins, and often has a plant species on it. Native species give you victory points, and invasive species fill your lands, invade and drive out native species. You can grow, propogate or kill species with the four resources: Fire, Water, Time and Labor. Each species has a personality that defines how they react to each resource. You may also play resources on your opponents' plants. There are also event cards, and most of these are wildfires.

The brilliance of the game is that it shows the effects of fires and invasive species on the environment. The designer is a [wildlife biologist?], though, and notes that some species actually propogate due to fire. This, coupled with beatiful pictures of plants make this a great teaching tool for discussing plant invasion and wildfire, as well as an interactive building game that is fun and combines simple strategy with risk management.

IncrediBrawl

Much like the title implies, IncrediBrawl is a fighting game. The designers sent us a copy to try out, and we enjoyed it. Our daughter in particular liked it. Each player has a deck of characters, and each character has an attack type (Physical, Energy or Primal) and a level. Each player secretly chooses a character, and then reveals simultaneously. Attack types overcome in a rock-paper-scissors fashion (Energy beats Physical,  Physical beats Primal, Primal beats Energy), and if the attack type is the same, there is a level and the highest wins. That's the basic resolution system, and that is enhanced by powerup cards, and the characters themselves each have a special ability.

Multiplayer games have the players do two-person matches, with winners facing off. The winner is the first person to get 10 glory, which are the victory points of the game. We noticed that glory tokens exchanged hands a lot, based on character powers. Overall, a fun and light game.

Warmachine: Tactics

Warmachine: Tactics is a game we have anticipated for a while. Since Privateer Press announced teaming up with WhiteMoon Dreams a while back, I've been frothing at the mouth for this. Warmachine: Tactics is a PC/Mac version of the Warmachine tabletop miniatures game that supports both single player campaign modes and multiplayer online matches. Since the project launched on July 10th, it steamrolled through its initial goal and has been unlocking stretch goals like mad. We interviewed Matt Wilson of Privateer Press shortly before the project launched (you can read that here).

If you like turn-based strategy, take a look. This should be amazing. Also note that there are some great-looking miniatures playable in the tabletop game as backer rewards. We have high hopes for this game, and we are watching the project closely.

Daft Dice

After getting a comment below, I had to check this campaign out. I don't normally add things after-the-fact, but I just loved the Daft Dice campaign. The custom dice are really nice: laser-cut wooden dice with great designs. But what are really amazing are all the accessories. Take a look at the beautiful dice towers!

I can't even tell you how much I want a set of these business cards. Wow. Well played, Daft Concepts. Well played.

Did we miss any?

Any projects you feel should have been included, or comments about the ones featured? Let us know in the comments!

Privateer Press's Matt Wilson talks Warmachine: Tactics!

by Randy, Angie & Julian
@coffeeswiller
@growingupgamers


Hi, readers! We have an exciting treat for you today. Matt Wilson of Privateer Press agreed to give us an interview about Warmachine: Tactics, the computer version of their amazing tabletop miniatures game. The Growing Up Gamers crew have been big fans of Western Immoren, the setting for Warmachine, its sister game Hordes and the Iron Kingdoms roleplaying for about a decade. This is a world at war, a world of steampunk-inspired fantasy where nations go to battle with great machines of war called warjacks. Controlled and directed by powerful armored spellslingers called warcasters, these steam- and magic-powered robots are the game's namesake.

Matt Wilson, creative genius behind this world and founder of Privateer Press, is quite a guy. In addition to to being the game designer who brought us Warmachine, Matt is an accomplished artist whose work can be found both in Privateer Press products as well as in Magic: The Gathering; I highly recommend checking out his art site. Matt's company Privateer Press now makes tabletop miniature games (Warmachine, Hordes, and Monsterpocalypse), board games (Level 7, Grind, and the Bodgers line of games), hobby accessories (the Formula P3 line of paints, brushes, and hobby tools), and now is about to go electronic with Warmachine: Tactics.

A Warmachine computer game has been anticipated for a couple years, since the announcement of a partnership with Privateer Press and WhiteMoon Dreams. Two weeks ago, it was announced that Privateer Press would be going to Kickstarter to fund development of their game. We feel that this is a great move, as it allows fans to really get behind the game and have a more direct connections with the people producing it. The project launches July 10th, and we had the opportunity to ask Matt a few questions. Check out what he had to say!

Metal on Metal, by Matt Wilson

Growing Up Gamers:  I am so excited to play Warmachine on my computer! What can I as a player expect from this? Can I build my own warcaster? 

Matt Wilson: WARMACHINE: Tactics has both a multiplayer mode and a single player campaign mode. The multiplayer mode has a lot of similarity to the tabletop version, but as this is a different medium, we're taking advantage of what it can do to enhance the experience, while at the same time, eschewing that which works better on the tabletop. In the single player campaign, while you're not building your own warcaster, you are in control of the character's progression from level to level. Each campaign focuses on a single central character, the first of which we'll be revealing in our Kickstarter video.

GUG:  Different characters and campaigns? Awesome! How close will this adhere to the rules for the tabletop game? Have there been any challenges in translating those rules to a computer game? And is there anything your team is bringing to the digital game that couldn't be done on the tabletop?

Matt: The experience will feel familiar, but it's not the same game. Conceptually, it's the same world and environment and we're adhering the the same basic mechanics on a fundamental level. But the math behind the scenes works differently. There aren't any cannon fodder soldiers that go down when they take one point of damage as sustainability is much more crucial in a game of this scale, lest balance be tipped too quickly in a match. And definitely, the medium gives us the opportunity to do things like interactive terrain, that is less viable on the tabletop. Of course, the very exciting part of this game is getting to experience it all happening in front of your eyes. We've taken a very cinematic approach to the action. Seeing Warjack power attacks happening as real-time events in the middle of a combat round is just awesome!

GUG: Are there plans to port to any consoles if the Kickstarter is successful?

Matt: Our focus is entirely on PC and Mac, but we are developing with other platforms in mind should the opportunity arise. The team at WhiteMoon Dreams has designed a UI that can work on virtually any platform with any control set. In other words, it works just as well with a touch screen as it does with keyboard and mouse, as it does with a standard console controller. So, if opportunities do come up in the future, we won't have to reinvent the game from scratch.

GUG: The GUG crew is no stranger to Kickstarter; we (as Escapade Games) used that platform to fund our upcoming game, Storm Hollow: A Storyboard Game. Crowdfunding allows a connection between game creators and fans that traditional publishing just did not do, and we love the way it has allowed game designers to bring their products to market. The press release made it pretty clear why you chose to crowdfund Warmachine: Tactics. I would follow up and ask, why now?

Matt: It took a long time for me to believe that Kickstarter was the right route for us to take in order to make this game. While Kickstarter has quickly proven to be a powerful platform for fundraising, it's still a new platform, and one that is little understood. We needed time to study it, to determine if the risks inherent in crowd sourcing are worth accepting given what we are trying to achieve, and to understand the actual business necessary to manage a successful Kickstarter project. The majority of Kickstarters fail. Of those that fund, many individuals and businesses alike find that they have not properly planned how to manage the capital that they've raised. In conducting a Kickstarter, you're making a huge promise to the people who back your project, and more than anything, we wanted to be confident that we could deliver on that promise. So, before our project will even launch, we have put a great deal of time, effort and money  into developing enough of WARMACHINE: Tactics so that our potential backers can have the same confidence we do.

The myth about Kickstarter is that it's a place to fund ideas. We're not Kickstarting an idea, we're Kickstarting a project that is in motion, that has proof-of-concept and a business plan, and that is being executed by an experienced team with overhead and expenses that must be maintained during this startup period prior to even launching the project on Kickstarter. Getting to this point, responsibly, took time, and I wouldn't have wanted to launch it a moment sooner.

GUG: Why does Privateer Press need Kickstarter? There has been a lot of talk among fans of crowdfunding as to who belongs there, whether or not bigger players should be there, even suggesting that they might be edging out independent studios. What can you say about that and the kind of commitment it takes to delve into making a video game, and whether it would have been possible to do otherwise?

Matt: For Privateer and WhiteMoon Dreams, the two practical routes to getting a WARMACHINE video game made are the traditional publisher/financier method, which entails lengthy review processes and a great deal of expense on the part of the developer in an effort to try and align the product they are trying to make with the right financing entity — which in the current video game industry environment I would liken to trying to force a planetary alignment with your own bare hands — or, crowd sourcing. For a company the size of Privateer Press, creating a brand new video game isn't analogous to creating new board game product, it's literally launching an all new business. In order to make this happen on a timeline that is within the foreseeable future and not have to nut away funds for the next ten or fifteen years, saving up enough to launch such a venture, crowd sourcing has become a viable and attractive opportunity.

Kickstarter itself has released its own stand on what's appropriate for Kickstarter. The idea that 'bigger players' have a negative impact on other projects is a theory with no scientific support. Instead, Kickstarter has proven the positive impact 'big players' (or let's say popular companies and personalities) have had on the community as a whole because all the data they have shows how many first-time backers those big projects brought in, and how many of those backers went on to back other projects on Kickstarter. Whether or not Privateer is a 'big player' is somewhat in the eye of beholder. The fact is, we're totally independent, as is WhiteMoon Dreams. But Privateer does have its own community of players and I believe that many of them are going to be first-time backers on Kickstarter with this project, which means we'll also be helping the Kickstarter community grow by conducting our project there and exposing new people to the platform and all the projects going on there.

The best thing about Kickstarter is that its patrons are the ones that ultimately decide what belongs there or not. Anyone arguing that a particular project shouldn't have been on Kickstarter because of its owner's pre-established popularity, is arguing against the very spirit of Kickstarter, which is that the 'crowd' has been given the power to decide. Beyond the terms of use that Kickstarter has defined, it's not for any individual to say what should or shouldn't be put on Kickstarter — the community of Kickstarter users will decide that as a whole, and currently, the community as a whole does not appear to agree with the negative sentiment.

GUG: We are big fans of Magic: The Gathering, a game you are certainly familiar with, given your illustrations can be found on a number of cards for that game. A few years back, Wizards of the Coast released Duels of the Planeswalkers, a great videogame version of Magic available for consoles. Aside from being fun, that game serves as an excellent tutorial for learning to play Magic and has been phenomenal for bringing new players to that game. Do you anticipate Warmachine: Tactics having a similar role?

Matt: WARMACHINE: Tactics will be a great way to introduce people to the ideas of the game and the setting, and we certainly hope it will introduce more people to the hobby of tabletop gaming, but it doesn't function as a tutorial. In the Magic example, you're actually playing the same cards with the same rules in the video game that you are in the physical game. But WARMACHINE: Tactics is somewhat different in scope, and the mechanics that must be understood on the tabletop are largely invisible in the video game experience, so you're not likely to come away from WARMACHINE: Tactics fluent in all of the rules necessary to know in order to play the tabletop game But you will understand the fundamental strategies and the nuance of how different elements in your squad interact and support each other. I do think being good in one would give you some advantage in the other.

GUG: Since tabletop Warmachine is not a solo game, we were wondering about the depth of the campaign mode versus multiplayer mode. Do you expect most players to spend more time playing in multiplayer mode, with the campaign  being sort of a tutorial? Additionally, will there be an AI for solo play outside of campaign mode?

Matt: The single player game is not a tutorial, but it will be a great way to learn the depth and strategy of the game because it does structure your learning experience through the course of the campaign. But the single player campaign is where we get to tell our story, and that's something that both Privateer and WhiteMoon Dreams share — a love of great stories. So making sure we had an amazing campaign experience has always been a requirement of the project. Whether or not more people will play mulitplayer than the campaign, or vice versa, I can't predict. But the multiplayer environment is going to be something that is constantly expanding, so I suspect that always-fresh experience will keep people engaged in multi-player quite a bit. We're not just doing one campaign, though — it's a big world with a lot of characters, so the single player experience will also be something that is constantly fresh. And we are building an arena where you can test your squad builds against an AI, for sure.

GUG: Sounds great! Will we see our favorite Warmachine warcasters in campaign mode? 

Matt: There are dozens of warcasters in the setting, so whether or not you see your favorite featured immediately remains to be seen! But the ultimate goal is to realize as much of the setting as possible in this game. And the better we do with our Kickstarter campaign, the more we'll be able to get in there.

GUG:  Many of the fans of Warmachine are miniature hobbyists (myself included!) and would say that some of the fun of the game is painting models to bring to the table. Will there be a nod to the creative types, perhaps the option to "paint" warjacks and units with customized colors, or choose alternate color schemes?

Matt: All I can say right now is that we're hobbyists, too, so this isn't something we have overlooked. Okay, I'll also say, "Stretch Goal".

GUG: Thanks for that tidbit! Where in the Warmachine timeline does this take place, or is it outside that timeline? Prime starts in 604 A.R., and Colossals takes us to 608 A.R. 

Matt: The campaign is going to feature characters that are new to WARMACHINE, some of them introduced in next year's expansion book, Vengeance. As such, the timeline is concurrent with the timeline in the story found in the game books.

GUG: In terms of the collaboration and division of labor between WhiteMoon Dreams and Privateer Press, how involved has Privateer been in the development, and what level of freedom has been afforded to WhiteMoon Dreams to make their mark on Warmachine: Tactics? What has been done to ensure the game feels like Western Immoren, the world of Warmachine?

Matt: The level of collaboration between Privateer and WhiteMoon Dreams is huge and will have a huge effect on the outcome of the game. I'm personally part of the core gameplay design team. I'm also storyboarding character animations and cinematics and I'm leading the writing on the campaign story. In doing all of that, I'm also drawing on the resources at Privateer, like Jason Soles and DC in development, and Doug Seacat, our lead writer, who can assist with making sure the story and game are as faithful to the tabletop game as possible. But there's no real give-and-take here, like one might expect, because WhiteMoon Dreams is 100% invested in making a game that looks and feels as true to WARMACHINE as it can. We're so totally aligned in our goals, and I spend so much time with both companies now, it often feels to me like one giant organization. Even moreso as we've been developing these new characters for both the tabletop game and video game. We've got rules being developed at Privateer that are getting interpreted into the video game at WhiteMoon Dreams, and we've got artwork being created at WhiteMoon Dreams that will appear in our books and that our sculptors are using to create miniatures for the tabletop. It's an incredible level of synergy to see happening between two distinct companies and the end result is that we're going to bring WARMACHINE to life in video game form. It's one of the most exciting things I've ever been a part of.

--

I hope that you are all as excited about Warmachine: Tactics as we are! We will link to the Kickstarter once it goes live. In addition, Matt has agreed to do a follow-up interview at that time. I'm sure we'll have loads more questions once we see what the backer tiers and stretch goals are! Do you guys have any questions for Matt? Leave them below! Here's the teaser trailer:





Images courtesy of Privateer Press

Interview with Euphoria: Build A Better Dystopia designer Jamey Stegmaier!

by Randy
@coffeeswiller

Hello, gamers! We have a treat today. We had an interview with Jamey Stegmaier of Stonemaier Games. Jamey is the designer of Viticulture and Euphoria: Build A Better Dystopia, and you may have seen the previous interview with him over at the Escapade Games blog here. As I am writing this, he is in the last few days of the Kickstarter campaign for Euphoria, and he was nice enough to answer a few questions for us about Euphoria and Viticulture.

Growing Up Gamers: I'm excited to talk to you about Euphoria: Build A Better Dystopia, but I want to back up a little and talk about Viticulture, your first game. You really nailed production on that one, and did a phenomenal job delivering. How did you do that, and what advice can you offer for other designers' freshman attempts? Perhaps I should add "aside from the wealth of information in the Kickstarter Lessons column on the Stonemaier Games website". :)

Jamey Stegmaier: Thank you so much! I’m glad you’re pleased with the production quality. I have to give credit to my graphic designer (Christine Bielke), my artists (Beth Sobel and Jacqui Davis), and Panda Game Manufacturing (Chris Matthew is amazingly responsive). The combination of those four parties created the game you see today. So my advice to other publishing startups is: Hire talented professionals and manufacturers. This is not a place to cut costs. This is not the time to have a friend do your graphic design or art for free. If they’re good enough to do your graphic design or art, you’ll know it because they’ll charge you. Also, I’m sure there are some other great manufacturers out there, but I could not be happier with Panda. They are consummate professionals every step of the way.

GUG: Viticulture looks amazing, by the way! Looking at the game board and player boards for Viticulture, I noticed that that they are double-sided. One side has detailed descriptions, and the other side is more minimalist and lets the art stand out. What led to the decision to make them this way?

JS: When I got the board and player mat art from Jacqui, I was swept away into Tuscany. And then we covered both with graphic design, and I was still swept away, but not quite as much. So given the marginal cost to make the mats and boards double-sided (why have one side when you can have two?), I decided to have one side of the mat with as few words and design elements as possible.

GUG: Good call! In terms of number of players, 2-6 players is quite a range. I've seen quite a few games that indicated that they played with this range, but it often seems that playing with 2 players or 5-6 players can be clunky or frustrating. Do you feel that you have avoided this with Viticulture and Euphoria? Do you feel there is an optimal number of players for the games?

JS: I’m a big fan of games that pull off that range. I want games that I can play with my girlfriend (who is currently imaginary, but it’s feasible she could exist in the future) or two other couples. In my games, I try to break down turns into single choices. Many worker-placement games let players use all of their workers each turn, which can lead to some interesting decisions, but it also means that you might be waiting a really long time between turns. In Viticulture and Euphoria, your turn consists of placing exactly 1 worker on the board. That keeps things moving along. Also, in Euphoria, if a worker occupies a spot on the board that you want, you can often place your worker on that spot and “bump” the other worker back to its owner. Thus the more players, the more bumping occurs, and the game moves quite quickly.

As for optimal numbers, based on the way it scales, Viticulture is a little looser and forgiving at 3 or 5 players. I would slightly lean towards those numbers, but I like tight games that make me think on my feet. Time will tell which number I prefer for Euphoria. So far I enjoy it with any number of players.

GUG: Are there any mechanical similarities between Euphoria and Viticulture? Was it easy to transition between working on the two games?

JS: Both are worker-placement games, but that’s where the similarities end. The games have very different mechanics, starting with Euphoria using dice as the workers. That was one of the first elements I incorporated into Euphoria, and it set it apart from Viticulture from day one and helped with the transition. Viticulture had more of an indirect influence on Euphoria in that after the Viticulture campaign, I wanted to play more board games. I wasn’t playing enough. So I started playing a lot more games, and it was tough for those games not to influence Euphoria. I played 7 Wonders and suddenly Euphoria was a drafting game. I played Belfort and suddenly Euphoria had a hexagon-shaped board with area control. I played Tzolk’in and suddenly Euphoria had a tech track. Fortunately I was able to distance myself from those games to make something unique and new. I wonder if other designers run into this—you play a game you love, and you want to make your version of it.

GUG: In all honesty, we have a new favorite mechanic every week; it's not just you! Aside from your own games, what games end up on your table most often? And what are your current top three favorite games?

JS: I’ll leave Viticulture and Euphoria out of this answer, because those are the games I’ve played the most. In the last few months, 7 Wonders has probably hit the table the most. My current top 3 are: Tzolk’in, Libertalia, and Agricola. But there are a lot of games up there near that top 3. Some of the games I’ve played quite a bit through the ages are Settlers, Dominion, poker, and Magic. I’m sure those four continue to influence me even if I don’t realize it.

GUG: How did you decide on the art and style? I really like the 1920's Art Deco style in Euphoria. What did your collaboration with the artist look like?

JS: Jacqui Davis is such a pleasure to work with, and her visual talents are truly amazing. She and I talked about the look of the game early on in the process, and after we were on the same page, I would send her the story behind the world, the markets, and the recruits, and se would take it from there. Sometimes I had a specific detail to mention, but usually I tried to give Jacqui complete creative freedom. She knows what she’s doing better than I do.

GUG: We love the work of Jacqui Davis! She has created some aweome pieces for Storm Hollow: over 100 at last count! What drew you to the dystopia theme? What dystopian sources most inspired you? And what came first when designing Euphoria: mechanics, or theme?

JS: I’ve been a big fan of dystopian literature and movies for a long time. When I started brainstorming for the project, I made a long list of my favorite dystopian works…it’s a long list. But a select few of my favorites are Ready Player One, Children of Men, The Matrix, and Oryx and Crake. Although Euphoria has a story of its own, there are lots of winks to other dystopian works in the game.

In the design process, theme came first, but each thematic element was paired with a mechanic after a brainstorming session. I made a list of the core elements of dystopian fiction, and those elements inspired the mechanics. Of course, the mechanics changed quite a bit over time, but by that point I had a different goal in mind: fun. Theme and mechanics are so important, but if they don’t translate into fun, they don’t mean anything.

GUG: Are you finding that it is easier to run a Kickstarter campaign the second time around? What would you say has been the biggest change between the campaign for Viticulture and the campaign for Euphoria?

JS: I wouldn’t use the word “easier.” :) I was more prepared this time, but it’s still a learning process every time. Plus, the scope of Euphoria and the speed at which we funded put this project in a whole different category than Viticulture (Viticulture had 942 backers; Euphoria has over 3000 as I write this. Viticulture funded on Day 17; Euphoria funded after 1 hour). I thought I might sleep more during the Euphoria campaign, but that hasn’t been the case. It’s a 60-70 week job in addition to my day job.

The biggest change between the two campaigns is something I didn’t expect and something I probably won’t do again. Because Viticulture was released to the world during the Euphoria campaign, there has been an incredible amount of enthusiasm for it. The question I got asked the most during Week 1 was: When are you going to add Viticulture reward levels? I listen to my backers, so I added Viticulture levels, but it’s always felt a little odd to me, because Viticulture is a completely different game than Euphoria. So there was a period during the project when there was a lot more attention on Viticulture than Euphoria. In the future I’d like to keep our games completely separate.

The plus side to all this is that we’ve completely sold out of Viticulture, so we’re considering a second print run.

GUG: Lastly, I wanted to ask about playtesting. How much playtesting went into Viticulture? And how did the playtesting process evolve between Viticulture and Euphoria?

JS: Great question, because this was a big difference between the two. Hardly any blind playtesting went into Viticulture before the project began. Alan and I tested it a ton, but I don’t think we realized the value of blind playtesting at that point. Thankfully, many backers became invested in the game during the Kickstarter project, so we had an unexpected outpouring of blind playtesting that really helped the project.

I learned my lesson for Euphoria, and I now had access to a ton of amazing, insightful gamers. So Euphoria went through a gauntlet of blind playtesting by 60+ people around the world while Alan and I continued to playtest it. We made the PnP (print and play) accessible to any backer during the project, so many more people have continued to blind-playtest it during the campaign. I would say that we easily have over 100 playtesters at this point, if not more. They are an amazing asset, and I can’t think them enough for the ink, sweat, time, and effort they put into helping us build a better dystopia.

--

What a guy, eh? We're really happy Jamey took the time to talk to us. He's a great guy, and we're happy to see his project doing so well. Please pop over and check it out while there's still time!

Drooling over Goblins Drool, Fairies Rule!

by Randy

Wowed. That's what I was... wowed. I sat down to play a rhyming game with cutesy art with the kids, and I ended up playing a reasonably in-depth strategy game. That's how I felt after playing Goblins Drool, Fairies Rule. And I love this game.

Stretch goal already met, box will be upgraded to a collectable tin!!

Goblins Drool, Fairies Rule! is a game by David Luis Sanhueza of the Game-O-Gami game development studio. It is for 2-4 players, but also has a single-player variant for solitaire lovers out there. It consists of a deck of double-sided tarot-sized cards. Each card has a fairy on one side, and a goblin on the other, each with their own name, which rhymes with certain other fairies and goblins.

Jack is too little to read the cards, but he was rooting for the "Yucky Goblins" all the way... and laughing at the rhyming names and detailed pictures

The rules are very simple. On your turn, you play one of your cards (which are face-up in front of you). You check for a rhyme with other cards in the center (the Fairy Circle), and flip all cards that rhyme with the one you played. You then compare the symbol on the card you played with the ones in the Fairy Circle (for instance, Pixie Power rhymes with Dusty Dour,  Petal Flower, Nappy Hour and Sweet and Sour), and take all that match the card played. And then play passes to the next person, until one person either has no goblins left, or has collected six fairies. See... simple, right?

Angie wins! Boo-yaa!

The brilliance of this game is its elegance. That above is basically the gameplay in a nutshell. But with five rhyming groups, and two sets of binary suit symbols (sun/moon and mushroom/frog), it can be as strategic as you care to play. Since opponents' cards are face-up, you can plan your plays in such was as to prevent them from getting the fairies they need, or to try and make sure that they end up with a goblin. The emergent strategy should be enough to make even strategic gamers think hard... yet be able to play with young kids.

Julian and Sabine discussing various rhyming options

I played this game with my daughter, and she loved it. My daughter is an emergent reader and this game was great for her. The theme and art appealed to her, and she got a chance to practice reading skills. It was a blast watching her sound things out. She found out quickly that you couldn't just compare the last couple letters to check for rhymes.

Katie practicing her rhymes

I highly recommend this game. It is currently on Kickstarter and has met it's funding goal (and then some!) Now is your chance to get it and preorder a copy of this great game.. Some time after the Kickstarter campaign, of course, you'll be able to pick it up in stores, but there are some awesome  rewards and stretch goals available only via the Kickstarter campaign, such as an art book, stickers and double-sided puzzle. You don't want to miss this one, it's an excellent game and GORGEOUS!

Ok, maybe the grownups were getting a little too competitive with this one! But C'MON, FAIRIES RULE!!!

Let's Get the Party (Kick)Started!

by Angie

I've recently been quite fascinated with Kickstarter. If you’re not familiar with Kickstarter, you should pop over and give it a look. Kickstarter is a really cool crowd-funding platform for creative projects, and I think its great how many new game designs are getting published because of it. Kickstarter provides a valuable service to game designers, publishers, and gamers alike. Designers and publishers can get the funding they need to get their games to market; and gamers can be in on the ground floor of exciting new games, helping to decide which projects they want to see happen and often gaining cool rewards, recognition, swag, and other benefits for their support.

In addition to all of that, Kickstarter presents an interesting method for communication between the game’s creators and the players, allowing for comments and ideas to be integrated before a game prints. Some game creators offer supporters the ability to name things in the game, make choices about certain elements, and other fun interactions that really make you feel like you are part of the process. And of course as a supporter not only are you helping make a game come to life, you also are able to guarantee yourself a copy before anyone else. Many of the Kickstarer campaigns have exclusive bonuses or reduced rates on extra copies of the games for supporters, so it’s worth taking a look even If you are on a budget, every little bit helps.

I’m mentioning Kickstarter because I think it’s something every gamer should know about. I’m also bringing it up now because we had the opportunity to play a prototype copy of a game that is up on Kickstarter right now, with 13 days to go at the time of this post. The game is called White Elephant Card Game, and is designed by Brian Kelley. This card game manages to be both a fun light game that recreates the experience of a white elephant gift party AND makes a particularly cute gift FOR a white elephant gift party. Double Whammy!

The basic premise of the game is that you are a cheapskate who needs to pick up a few gifts for some friends and family for the holiday, but don’t want to spend any money… so you hatch up a plan to trade the junk in your attic for stuff the people on your list will like by attending several white elephant gift parties. Just in case you are wondering what it is all about, a white elephant gift party is a quirky gift exchange game in which everyone brings a wrapped gift (often a silly or weird item) and places it into a common pool. There are a lot of variations of the “rules”, but it usually involves people taking turns opening a gift, with each subsequent player having the ability to steal a previously opened gift or grab a new one from the pile.

This game replicates that core idea well in a card game format. You are trying to grab cards with a high score in specific colors, and you do so by bringing gifts (placing a card face down on the table), opening presents (turning a card face up), and stealing them from other players (taking a card they’ve revealed and putting it in front of you). The game flows well, and the fun retro style art and zany oddball gift photos and description really help drive home the theme.

After playing this game last night, we were discussing how funny it would be to stock up on a bunch of copies of this game and give it out at my family’s annual gift exchange party (which is similar to the white elephant exchange game described above, except we usually bring nice presents that people would like instead of junk from our attics!). Anyhow, we were discussing about how it would be interesting and amusing to give one each year and follow up with a few rounds of playing the game to extend the fun of the party. It seems like one of those perpetual gift items that could turn into quite a family tradition. Whoever ended up with the White Elephant Card Game would have a fun reminder of the event, and a neat little game to play as well… assuming they didn’t give it away at their next white elephant party. Even passing a single copy of the game around would make for a good holiday laugh.

If you just love white elephant gift parties and can’t get enough, or you really want to stock up on gifts for the next few holiday seasons, this is a dream come true! Otherwise, it’s still an interesting, light-weight, family-and-friends game that plays quickly and offers some strategic decision making that is worth checking out. Kickstarter projects are time-sensitive, so what are you waiting for?!? :)