Biblios: Quill and Parchment and Mining Colony are live (Monks and space miners)
Update: Biblios: Quill and Parchment and Mining Colony are live on Kickstarter and the campaign will run for 20 days. Both are part of a 4-game launch by Dr. Finn. You may back one, two, three or all four of them. A package deal that includes the four games plus the Cosmic Run bundle (basic or deluxe) is also available.
Our preview post below was published on August 21.
Two soloable games by Dr. Finn are launching on Kickstarter on August 24 (together with the non-solo Nanga Parbat and The Butterfly Garden). Biblios: Quill and Parchment is a 1-4 player roll 'n' write game in which you play as a monastic scribe, and Mining Colony is a 1-4 player tile laying game about mining resources from another planet.
In the Biblios Q&P solo mode, you are playing against a fellow monk, an AI called Cadfael. The game lasts 8 rounds (days) divided in two periods of 4 days each, and your goal is to score more piety points than him. You will first mark yourself and the AI in the chapel area on the side board. Your main task is to copy books about religion, astronomy, philosophy, plants and beasts. Cadfael goes first: you will roll his Abbot Influence dice, his Novice die (the Novice die sends the novice to do chores outside the monastery), and his Books dice. Depending on what he rolled on the Influence dice (over or below 4), you may choose to or must re-roll. You mark his results on his board.
On your turn, you will roll your dice and decide if you want to re-roll all the dice, just one, or stop rolling. You mark your results on your board. Whoever completes a Book column first, receives a point bonus. In the second period of the game, you remove one of the Book dice and continue in the same manner, adding a bidding competition with the AI at the end of the round. The Abbot Influence total represents the bids.
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In the solo mode of Mining Colony, you are playing against a rival miner named Zorlord. You immediately win if you fill your board with tiles and build a structure (science stations and outposts) of every colour. If ten rounds pass without you completing this goal, you lose. Zorlord does not receive a colony board, his role is mostly to prevent your from taking the resources you want. Both you and the AI start with a hand of 12 excavation cards. Each round is divided in 3 phases: Discover, Excavate, Develop.
In the Discover phase, you draw one resource card and fill up the excavation zones with the resources shown. In the Excavate phase, you draw 3 cards from your excavation deck and pick one. You also draw one for the AI. The player with the highest number gets to take resources from the zones first. In the Develop phase, you will be using the resources you gained by placing tiles on your board, crystals on storage units, and workers and ships in their designated spaces. Some resources can be discarded to give you credits, which you can then spend to buy other tokens for your board. The construction of outposts and stations has specific placement requirements, so you have to make sure you meet them.