WiscoDice

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, Gamefound, and Indigogo to find projects that interest us.

There are certainly some exciting projects out in crowdfunding land. Let’s take a look at a couple of games that we think you should check out.

Joyride: Survival of the Fastest

First out of the gate this week we have Joyride: Survival of the Fastest a Kickstarter project from Rebellion Unplugged.

Joyride is a fast-paced racing game where players can smash into each other, deploy destructive items and use their cars’ special abilities to gain advantage over their opponents. Races take place on a large hex grid arena. Within the arena the race track is laid out as a series of checkpoints that must be crossed in order. The cool thing here is that the check point layout is completely customizable. While the game comes with suggested track layouts, but you can design your own layouts by placing checkpoints however you wish. 

During the game players are racing through checkpoints managing their speed and turning while trying to avoid obstacles and also use their abilities and items to mess with their opponents. Players roll dice to determine their movement speed each turn and can gain more or less dice depending on if they shift gears up or down. Joyride is not just a simple race, you can side-swipe, rear end and collide head on with other cars all with different out comes. On top of that you can use items like oil slicks, mines, and rockets to attack other cars or use nitro to get that burst of speed you need.

In addition, each car is unique and comes with a set of asymmetrical abilities specific to that car. To win you just need to be the first player to cross the finish line after the number of laps determined by the track layout. Joyride really looks like it could be a lot of chaotic fun and looks to bring some new ideas to the racing genre. If you are ready to strap in for Joyride: Survival of the Fastest get to their Kickstarter page before the campaign ends on September 7, 2023.

Kreel Manor

Next up this week is the Kickstarter for Kreel Manor, the dungeon crawl card game from designer Tristan Hall.

Kreel Manor is a fantasy dungeon crawling card game set in the universe of Kilforth (Gloom of Kilforth, Shadows of Kilforth). 1 to 3 players (4 with an expansion) will cooperatively take on the roles of heroes in one of 10 scenarios and ultimately face off against the Lord of the Manor to save the world. With the base game players can choose between the War Mage, The Wolf of the North (a sword based warrior) and the Night Raven (a rogue type class). Each round of the game Kreel Manor will challenge the players with a threat from the shadows such as Living Corpses, Barbarians and Goblins. The players can deal with these encounters in a variety of ways; combat is of course an option, but players can also resolve threats through other means like stealth or intimidation. Occasionally players will also face more deadly threats in the form of Foes which act as boss fights.

Players will discover powerful items and heroic skills that they will use to customize and refine their personal skill deck. Skills give each hero special abilities to aid them against threats and augment their powers. As players progress through the threats of a scenario they will eventually find plot cards which allow them to make a choice that will have an effect on the future of the scenario. The base “Lord of the Manor” pledge for Kreel Manor will cost ~$69 USD with higher tier options offering other items such as a playmat, 4th player expansion and an artbook. The Kreel Manor campaign ends on August 31, 2023 to head over to the Kickstarter page to make your pledge before then.