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 featured games are:

Emberleaf

Our first game this week is Emberleaf from The City of Games and designer Frank West on Kickstarter.

Emberleaf is a 1 to 5 player medium-weight strategy game where cute critters known as Emberlings work to rebuild their forest home. It features engine building and a unique “card dancing” mechanic.

During the game you will recruit a fellowship of animal hero cards to your player board. Each hero has skills and skill triggers that you use to take actions on your turn. These skills are triggered in different ways: by placing a card, by sliding cards on your player board, when they drop off your player board and some with an ongoing effect. The designers call this sequence of playing and manipulating your heroes on your player board “card-dancing” and it can require planning and precise timing to maximize your card’s abilities.

Heroes also have stats that affect the strength of the actions you take. When you use an action that requires a skill check such as attacking you look at all the available stats of that type on your heroes to determine the action’s strength. Your goals in Emberleaf include providing homes for villagers, clearing dangerous areas of the forest by attacking the threats there, completing favors (public objectives), earning trophies and unlocking bonuses. The player who has contributed the most to rebuilding the Emberlings home will be the winner! 

Let’s take a look at the different pledge levels available for Emberleaf:

  • Just the Game – $63 – one copy of the retail version of the game
  • Retail Edition – $70 – a retail copy plus one bonus pack of hero cards
  • Kickstarter Edition – $100 – Kickstarter edition of Emberleaf includes, Hero Packs 1,2 and 3, Trophies and Bonuses expansion, upgraded wooden tokens
  • Deluxe Edition – $154 – Everything from the Kickstarter Edition plus player tokens in alternate colors, neoprene player mats and upgraded banner tokens.

The campaign for Emberleaf will end on October 10, 2024, so be sure to get your pledge in before then.

Railroad Tiles

Our next game this week is Railroad Tiles from Horrible Guild on Kickstarter.

Railroad Tiles is a 1 to 4 player tile laying game inspired by the popular roll-and-write Railroad Ink series of games (and from the same designers). In the game you will draft sets of tiles to add to your personal transportation network of railways, highways, and stations.

You can draft as many as 4 tiles at once but you will choose later in the next round of drafting. As you build your landscape you will be able to use place train, car, and traveler tokens onto the routes you’ve built. The more tokens of the same type that you’ve built on a connected route, the more points you score for it. Tiles also either feature countryside or towns and you will earn points for making cities out of groups of at least 3 town tiles.

You will need to plan your network carefully though because if you end the game with too many open connections you will be penalized. Once the train comes to the end of the line after 8 rounds of play, the player who has built the best landscape and network will be the winner!

Before we pull out of the station lets looks at the different pledge levels that will be available:

  • Basic – $45 – Kickstarter special edition of the game plus the World expansion and all unlocked stretch goals
  • Advanced – $95 – Kickstarter special edition, the World expansion and 3 more expansions of your choice, all unlocked stretch goals
  • Collector – $157 – Kickstarter special edition, ALL 7 expansions (Lake, Forest, Canals, Countryside, Energy, Monuments and Desert) and all unlocked stretch goals

All aboard! It’s time to head over to the Railroad Tiles Kickstarter page and make your pledge before October 10, 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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