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.

Ada’s Dream

First up this week we have Ada’s Dream from Alley Cat Games on Kickstarter. 

It’s 1893 and you are one of the assistants of Ada Lovelace. In the reimagined history of Ada’s Dream you are working in her workshop in a pursuit to build the steam powered Analytical Engine, one of the first programmable computers ever made.

The game is a dice drafting euro game for 1 to 4 players. The game board features a rondel where you will draft dice to power your own analytical engine on your player board. The dice you draft also determines you can take on your turn. You will also add gears to your board that can manipulate the values of your dice with addition subtraction and multiplication to adjust your machine’s scoring for the end game.

Outside of the workshop you will travel to universities to give lectures, form partnerships with important historical figures like Charles Babbage. You’ll visit Ada in her study to get punch card programs for your machine to earn bonus points. Once one of the players completes their prototype engine each player will score for their machine, their partnerships, their travel and lectures and all their other accomplishments. Only one assistant will be chosen by Lovelace to complete her project and be the winner!

Check out the different pledge levels available below: 

  • Retail Edition – $57
  • Deluxe Edition – $69 – includes deluxe components, the Great Exhibition expansion and stretch goals
  • Complete Edition – $99 – all deluxe edition items plus a neoprene playmat and metal coins

The campaign for Ada’s Dream will conclude on July 3, 2024, so you will need to select your pledge before then. 

Apothebakery

Our second game this week is Apothebakery on Kickstarter from Lux Lupo games.

In the cute world of Apothebakery, you’ll use alchemy to make delicious treats to heal Adventurers  and cure their maladies. You’ll employ cuddle creatures known as Forries to gather resources for you from the wilderness. Using your foraged ingredients you will use alchemy to produce elixirs. You’ll need to be wary of brewing impure and failed elixirs though, if you don’t purge them from your inventory before the end of the game you’ll lose points!

Hopefully you’ll only be trying to heal adventurers with pure elixirs as impure ones can have unexpected side effects (even death!). Adventures show up with all kinds of problems from rope burn to dragon lacerations and you’ll need the right combination of elixirs to treat them. You need to help them quickly though, if an adventurer dies their vengeful ghost will haunt you using it’s unique ability to cause some havoc. The total reputation each player has earned by helping adventures will determine the winner. 

Here are the pledge tiers for Apothebakery:

  • Deluxe – $53 – premium cards stock, extra thick tokens, scoring dials, custom fabric bags and the micro expansion “Arcane Adventurers”
  • Master Alchemist – $90 – everything from deluxe plus upgraded acrylic and wooden tokens and two additional micro expansions. 

This campaign for Apothebakery is only brewing for a few more days so get to the campaign page before June 28, 2024, to make a pledge. 

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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