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. This week’s picks are:
Citizens of the Spark
Our first game of the week is Citizens of the Spark from Thunderworks Games on Kickstarter.
Citizens of the Spark is the latest game from Thunderworks Games in a new unique setting. Long ago in the land called Fera a mysterious transmission awakened the spark of intelligence in the many animal species there bringing in an age of technological development. Now the citizens of Fera compete to construct the greatest city in the land by recruiting and combining the skills of many different citizens.
1 to 5 players will be attempting to build the greatest city through card drafting, engine building and combo crafting. Each game of Citizens of the Spark is played with a different set of citizen cards selected during setup. You can use a recommended set of citizens or use randomized cards to create a unique setup.
You will draft groups of citizens into your city (personal tableau) creating stacks of matching citizen cards. After drafting you will select a stack of citizens to use one of their actions. Actions usually have three different strength levels and the more citizens you have in the stack the stronger the action becomes. Other players may choose to follow the active player’s action activating the same citizen from their own city.
The types of citizens and actions available are diverse, there are Owl Scholars that let you draw more citizens from the deck, Crow Merchants that earn you points for economic type cards in your city, Panther Warriors that earn you point if you have more military cards than your neighbors, and even a pesky Squirrel Bandit that can take points from other players. Other abilities include passive ongoing effects, abilities that trigger when a card is first played and endgame scoring abilities. The game will end when the citizen deck runs out and the player who has collected the most Sparks (points) has succeeded in building the grandest city in Fera.
Here are the two basic pledge levels are available in this campaign:
- Base Game – $40 – Citizens of the Spark base game plus the Transmission Pack with 3 new citizen types.
- Game + Playmat – $55 – Includes Citizens of the Spark, the Transmission Pack and 24×14 stitched edge neoprene playmat.
If Citizens of the Spark has sparked your interest make sure to visit the Kickstarter project page before the campaign ends on October 23, 2024.
Parks and Potions
Next up this week we are taking a look at Parks and Potions from Moon Saga Workshop on Kickstarter.
Parks and Potions is a fast-playing family friendly game for 1 to 5 players where players step into the shoes of a park ranger who must heal the fantastical fauna of their forest with alchemy and potion crafting.
The game plays over 5 rounds which represent a day of work for each park ranger. You’ll start your day by rolling dice to collect potent flowers that have the alchemical components you need to craft simple potions. You can combine potions using a simple color mixing system to create new potions of other colors e.g. a red and yellow potion make an orange potion while a yellow and blue potion combine to make a green potion.
Your inventory space is limited to six potions so efficiently combining potions and only keeping what you need will be important. You’ll then be able to complete objectives which involve either healing animals with a certain combination of potions, or performing experiments by providing the right set of potions.
Completing animal cards will grant you endgame points and some animal objective cards will provide special extract tokens. Extract tokens can be spent during the game to collect any one type of potion or they can be kept for points. Each of your completed experiment objectives will score points based on the number of remaining extracts you have.
At the end of the fifth day each player scores for their animal cards, for set bonuses of animal cards with the same biome symbol and for their experiments and extracts. The winning player will be the park ranger who best managed their potion inventory to heal the most animals and complete valuable experiments.
Here is a breakdown of the available pledge levels for Parks and Potions:
- Parks & Potions Base Game – $30 – Base game and all applicable stretch goals
- Deluxe Bundle – $60 – Base game with exclusive box sleeve, Metal first player badge, acrylic potion and extract tokens and all applicable stretch goals.
The Parks and Potions Kickstarter campaign will end on October 24, 2024, so be sure to check out the project before then.
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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