Game of Hunt is live (A collection of soloable games for children)
Update: Game of Hunt is live on Kickstarter and the campaign will run for 16 days. You may back a standard copy of the game, or also have your name mentioned in the rulebook.
Our preview post below was published on September 5.
Game of Hunt is a collection of four 1-6 players co-operative games intended for children. They all share the same core mechanics and the same (magnetic) components, although each game is played on a different board. The simplest game, Trash Monster, is suitable for children of 5 years old and up. The Kickstarter campaign will start on September 7.
In Trash Monster (age 5+), a monster is spreading garbage all over the town; this happens because the monster is lonely, but if you keep it distracted by playing with it, the townspeople will have time to clean up the trash. To set up the game, you first randomly place 6 obstacle tiles and 5 trash cubes on the map which features a grid (with rows A-E and columns 1-6). You do this by drawing cards that specify the coordinates of the item you must place. The monster pawn is also placed randomly. You draw five cards either featuring an arrow (up, down, left, or right) or a hand (a symbol for taking action) and place your player pawn wherever you deem fit.
The game is played in 15 rounds max. Each round, you start by taking 3 actions: playing a card to move one step in the corresponding direction, playing an action card to pick up trash where you stand or play with the trash monster so that the monster doesn’t move, or discarding cards to draw that many new ones. Then, you draw a card for the monster: if it’s an arrow, the monster moves and drops a new trash cube on its new location. At the end of the round, you draw cards to refill your hand back to 5 cards. If you manage to collect all trash cubes on the map before the end of the time track, you win the game!
In Mushroom Forest (age 5+), your goal is to collect mushrooms for your daddy gnome’s birthday, but some of them are magical and will teleport you across the forest. You set up the game by randomly placing 8 mushroom cubes; then you draw your five starting cards and place your pawn where you wish.
You must fulfill your goal (gathering 5 mushrooms) within 13 rounds. On your turn you can perform 3 actions, which are basically the same as in Trash Monster: playing arrow cards to move, action cards to pick up mushrooms, or discarding and re-drawing cards. However, whenever you pick a mushroom, you roll a six-sided die: on a 1 or a 6, you are teleported randomly somewhere on the map, otherwise you can pick up the mushroom.
In Another Planet (age 7+), aliens explore a planet to collect resources for their survival. You start by randomly placing 4 obstacle tiles, and the rest of the grid is filled with resources. Your goal is to collect them all within 20 rounds. As in the other games, on your turn, you start with a hand of 5 cards and can perform 3 actions by playing them (or use an action to refresh your hand). Action cards allow you to pick up resources. Once your turn is over, however, the wind blows and your pawn gets moved in the wind direction. The wind direction is determined by a card, and there is a “forecast” of 4 cards so that you know in advance where the wind will blow in the four next rounds.
In the last game, Monkey Temple (age 7+), you explore a Temple in which you must remove 5 Monkey statues by pushing them. The monkey statues (cubes) are randomly placed on the board. From the deck, you must draw four cards that will form the “monkey” deck. You have 10 rounds to eliminate all statues. The game is played like all the others, except statues act like obstacles. To interact with a statue to eliminate it, you must be adjacent to it, and then discard both an action card and an arrow card matching the movement you would need to move on the statue cube. Then you roll a die and succeed if you don’t roll a 1 or a 6. Finally, each round ends with the “statue dance”: you reveal the top monkey card and, if it’s an arrow, all statues will move in that direction. The deck is not shuffled so you will cycle through it in a regular manner, thus knowing the pattern of the monkey statues' dance.