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.

Trailblazer: The Arizona Trail

Our first game this week is Trailblazer: The Arizona Trail from Mariposa Games on Kickstarter.

Trailblazer: The Arizona Trail is a worker placement euro-game for 1 to 4 players that features beautiful artwork depicting locations, flora and fauna of the Arizona wilderness. Players will travel the 800 mile long Arizona Trail over the course of 8 weeks with the goal of collecting “Superstition Gold” and “Arizona Grit” and building a personal Arizona mural from the flora and fauna tiles you have gathered on your journey.

You will travel through mountains, plateaus, deserts and canyons to visit beautiful locations like Saguaro National Park, Jacob Lake and the Grand Canyon, provided you have enough supplies, water and health to make the trip. If you do, claiming the passage card for a location will grant you bonus resources and end game points. New passage cards are revealed every two round and represent the actual locations that you could see along that section of the Arizona Trail.

Alternatively you may want to discover the amazing flora and fauna that the Arizona Trail has to offer. You have two choices here, you can claim either flora or fauna cards or polyomino tiles to add to your personal mural. Flora cards provide bonus resources while Fauna cards give you a special ability you can use during the game. Tiles you claim will be added to your mural and will grant bonuses as well as points for set collection of the different tile shapes. Once you have completed the eighth round you have finished your 800 mile trek on the Arizona Trail. You will total the difference between your Superstition Gold and Arizona Grit points and the player with the highest score is the winner.

Pledge levels start with the Standard Retail Edition for $49, followed by the Deluxe Edition at $69. The Deluxe edition includes miniatures, dual layer player boards and all unlocked stretch goals. You can also grab the Trailblazer Bundle for $109 which gets you a Deluxe copy of Trailblazer: Arizona Trail and a retail edition version of the first Trailblazer game Trailblazer: The John Muir Trail. Make your journey to the Trailblazer: Arizona Trail Kickstarter page before March 8, 2024, to make your pledge.

Four Forests

Our second game this week is Four Forests from creator Andrew J. Smith on Kickstarter.

Four Forests is a short, easy to learn card game for 2 to 4 players featuring hand management, set collection, and bluffing. In the enchanted forests of Four Forests each player acts as the Guardian of a forest and plants vegetation to attract the most prestigious magical creatures to their forest.

The game plays out over 4 rounds with 4 actions in each round. First you will Cultivate, drawing plant cards into your hand and adding one into your habitat tableau in front of you. Then in the Harvest/Burn phase you secretly vote for one of the 4 creatures dealt at setup. These are the creatures you are attempting to attract to your forest with the appropriate plant cards in your play area. Your vote on a create during this phase either increases or decreases the creature’s prestige value at the end of the game. In the Pollinate phase, you simply pass a card in your hand to the player on your left. And finally in the Prune phase all players discard a card from their hand to be removed from play. After four rounds have been completed, the vote cards for each creature are revealed and each creature’s prestige determines the value of their preferred plant cards for end game scoring. The player with the most points in their habitat is the winner!

Four Forests features 22 different creature cards and 64 plant cards all with beautiful painterly artwork. You can get your copy of the game for a very reasonable $20. Also on offer are addons for the designer other games: Whiskers and Tails a cat themed hand management and set collection game, By the Seashore a hand management and tableau building game about collecting items on the beach, and Loot Dispute a drafting and set collection game where towns folk fight over the left over treasure from a looted dungeon. Make sure to visit the campaign for Four Forests before February 29, 2024, if you are interested in pledging.

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.

Stay informed when new Kickstart Monday projects come out by following us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter and following the #KickstartMonday hashtag.

Also checkout the latest articles from WiscoDice: