Welcome to Kickstart Monday! This is our weekly series featuring 2 or more crowdfunding projects that have caught our eye. We scour over platforms like Kickstarter and Gamefound to find projects that interest us.
Lairs
Our first game this week is Lairs from Kids Table Board Gaming on Kickstarter.
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Lairs is a competitive dungeon building and dungeon exploration game for at least 2 players. In Lairs you will be assembling a dungeon for your opponent to explore. You will start with a blank double layer dungeon board and slot in wooden wall pieces to create your dungeon layout.
Inside your dungeon you will add challenging monsters, devious traps and valuable treasure for your opponent to discover. Of course all of your dungeon building will be done in secret behind a screen so your opponent won’t know what to expect until they start exploring.
Once you and your opponent have completed your dungeons, it’s time to explore! You will each take turns moving through each others’ dungeons to discover their secrets.
The dungeon you are exploring is hidden so as you explore you will have to draw your own paper dungeon map in old-school dungeon crawling fashion. You’ll need to fight the monsters you encounter, disarm the traps and of course collect treasure. You will score points by defeating monsters, collecting treasure, exiting the dungeon and potentially for other accomplishments you have achieved. The best dungeon crawler will be the winner!
Another interesting aspect of Lairs is that the game content can slowly be expanded by opening a series of secret numbered packages. Each package will introduce new game concepts, rules, and components including monsters, traps and treasure. And if that’s not enough, you can also get the Deeper Dungeons expansion which allows for larger dungeons and multiplayer mode for 1 versus 2 or three gameplay. The expansion also includes boss monsters, new characters and terrain and special walls like portcullises and secret doors.
How do I get my hands on all this dungeony goodness you ask? Well let’s take a look at the available pledge levels:
- Lairs KS Game – $50 – The deluxe Kickstarter version of the Lairs base game including any unlocked stretch goals
- Lairs KS + Deeper Dungeons – $83 – Lairs deluxe kickstarter edition plus the Deeper Dungeons expansions which allows for up to 4 players
The Kickstarter campaign for Lairs will end on December 5, 2024, so to get your treasure you’ll need to back before then.
Tatsumi
Our next game this week is Tatsumi on Gamefound from Adam’s Apple Games and the designers of the excellent Planet Unknown.
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Tatsumi is a drafting and tile placement game for 1 to 4 players. In Tatsumi you’ll control a dragon flying over a unique 3d sea board to collect rings of elemental power to bring to your personal island to score points. Each turn you will fly your dragon to a location on the 3d sea board, collecting an elemental ring from the location you just left.
The sea board is made up of a grid of “sea wells” which can contain 3 wooden rings each. With the Gathering action you can collect additional rings that are adjacent to your dragon. As you collect rings you will be trying to obtain the right combination of rings to visit one of four shrine cards around the board.
Once you have a combination of rings that matches a shrine you can use the Scoring action to visit a shrine and then place those rings onto your personal island map and score them. In general you will gain more points for placing larger groups of the same element of rings. You can also use a special Shedscale action to trigger “Sanctuary” cards which are separate locations that provide you dragon with a special ability, scoring opportunity or utility action.
The sea wells on the board will eventually be emptied and then filled with unique sand dollar tokens (which are very cool looking) and depleting the stock of sand dollars will end the game. Your final score will depend on how well you placed rings onto your island and used the sanctuary cards. For more advanced play you can also introduce asymmetrical gathering abilities so that each player’s dragon has their own unique power and method for gathering rings.
Tatsumi is available on Gamefound at the following pledge levels:
- Standard Edition – $40 – Standard edition of Tatsumi with wooden dragons and ring and all other tokens in cardboard
- Limited Edition – $55 – The Limited edition includes screen printed dragons and rings and wood tokens
Fly on over to Gamefound to gather your copy of Tatsumi before December 5, 2024, when the campaign ends.
Did we miss your favorite project?
Thank you for checking out this week’s Kickstart Monday! If you find these interesting or want some attention on a Kickstarter or other crowdfunded projects that you would like to read more about please share your thoughts with us via our social media or email.
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