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.

Heroes of the Sanctum: The Strategy Card Game

Our first game this week is Heroes of the Sanctum: The Strategy Card Game from Firetap Games on Kickstarter.

Heroes of the Sanctum is a solo dungeon crawling card game set in a dark fantasy universe. You will be in control of four unique heroes as you take on quests and face grim enemies that threaten the world. Choose from heroes like the Warlock the Spirit Dancer, the Pyromage and the Assassin. Each hero had a personal passive ability and a unique action to be used in quests and combat.

There are variety of quests to choose from where your heroes may be defending a fort, delving dungeons or recovering a valuable artifact. Your adventure will take you to different regions like the Forsaken Cliffs or a Molten Lake each with different obstacles and effects not to mention the monstrous threats you will face. Test your heroes against enemies like Dread Knights, Reapers, Underhounds and Enraged Ghouls. Each threat has a unique action to challenge your party. Let’s also not forget the spoils of victory, you will earn loot for defeating threat which you can strategically assign to your party members for the most benefit. The Heroes can also advance by completing different quest goals growing in power even further. Your victory will depend on how you manage your Heroes unique actions in combination with Stratagem cards which you use to activate the 8 core Hero actions: Attack, Heal, Defend, Scout, Use, Taunt, Assist and Move. You will have to use your action points wisely to overcome obstacles and defeat threats if you hope to achieve your quest!

The Heroes of the Sanctum core game is available for just $30 and will include any applicable stretch goals. For $74 you can opt for the Ultimate pledge which includes the core game, the Epic expansion and the Multiplayer expansion that adds rules for up to 4 players to play the game cooperatively each controlling one hero. This pledge also includes a unique Comic Campaign book – a graphic novel that also doubles a game book offering an immersive series of quests and some new game mechanics. If you are ready to dive into some dark fantasy roleplaying and dungeon crawling check out the Heroes of the Sanctum Kickstarter campaign before it ends on April 25th 2024.

Cosmos Empires

Our next project is Cosmos Empires from Bigger Worlds on Gamefound.

Cosmos: Empires is a fast, easy to learn tableau and engine building card game for 2 to 8 players where you build and grow a galactic empire. Each turn of the game you will roll production dice to determine if any cards in your empire (or others player’s empires) produce credits. Any card that has a roll value that matches the dice will produce cosmic credits for that player. You will then have 2 actions to use on your turn.

Three options are available. First you can use an action to tweak your production roll if the dice didn’t land in your favor. Second, you can cycle a card in the available build pool of 10 cards and collect 2 credits. Third and most importantly you can use cosmic credits you’ve produced to build a card from the build pool. You will be able to choose from variety of beautifully illustrated cards some representing ships and facilities like the T-wing, the World Ship and the Fabricator Belt while others represent more fantastical cosmic creatures and locations such as the Nebula Whale, the mysterious Librarian entity and the cosmic world-tree Yggdrasil. Each card provides additional production value to grow your empire and may come with a special ability unique to that card. Once a player has reached a total of 30 production across their cards the end game is triggered, and the player with the most productive empire wins!

The Cosmos Empires campaign is offering a 2nd edition of the original Cosmic Empires released in 2022 and a brand new expansion titled Culture Clash. With Culture Clash each player will start the game with 2 secret culture cards like Ancient, Martial or Technical. Each culture provides the player with a one-time special ability that is triggered when the player reveals the culture card. Culture Clash also adds a host of new cards more than doubling the number of cards available. 

A copy of Cosmos: Empires and the Culture Clash expansion are available for $35 which includes clear card sleeves for all the cards in the core game and the expansion. You can also pledge for the core game or their expansion on their own for $25 and $15 respectively. There is also a Complete Collections Edition pledge level available for $120 that includes the core game and expansion, upgraded metal dice, mother of pearl tokens and a wooden collectors box. To expand your cosmic empire, visit the Gamefound campaign page for Cosmos: Empires before April 25th 2024.

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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