Watch your Back: Week January 1 - 7
Happy new year! Like always, we've got your back. Let's check out the first two crowdfunding campaigns of the year.
***
Button Shy just announced the next game in Scott Almes's Simply Solo Series (some previous ones being Food Chain Island and Ugly Griffon Inn): The Last Lighthouse. In it you have to survive a Nightmare Deck, with bad dreams threatening to destroy your lighthouse. You can use the double-function cards as traps to control or eliminate the threats.
The campaign is live on Kickstarter until 13 January.
Personal opinion: I've stopped buying Button Shy games on Kickstarter, because of import costs to the EU, but this may be one I'll buy over at P&P Arcade later to try out.
***
Over on Gamefound we'll have the 2nd Edition of Hunted: Kobayashi Tower later this week. In the game, you roll dice to eliminate terrorists Bruce Willis-style. The new version has more ways to mitigate the dice rolls (always good), a new health point mechanism and improvements to the game's pace.
An update pack and the Print & Play files will be available as well. This is the first game of a new Solo Game of the Month Club by Gabe Barrett, so it looks like there will be more goodness in February already.
Personal opinion: Athena liked the first edition and recommended it as a filler game. As this is a push-your-luck dice game, I should probably check it out. If I get to crawl through vents and shout “Yippee-ki-yay” it will be a sure back.
***
January is "Make 100" month on Kickstarter. Lots of small campaigns with just 100 rewards will go live. Some of them will probably be for board games, and then some of those are bound to be solable. We may have a post later if interesting games pop up, but because of the limited availability, us mentioning games may also be too late. So it may be wise to check the crowdfunding website yourself once in a while as well this month.
Hunted: Kobayashi Tower will go live on Gamefound on January 9th. I spoke too soon 😁
I still have my Hunted: Kobayashi Tower, it's a fun christmas game from time to time. Joking aside, it's a nice push your luck, but the dice are killing me. I replaced them with a token pull system of my own. Though since Hunted: Wode Ridge came, I'm kinda "over it". I will be trying to offload all 4 of my Hunted games this year. So probably won't back the upgrade pack. I did play most of the games to death though. Imho the Hunted: Mining Colony 415 is the best in the series, the dexterity is less about pure luck and more engaging for me.
With ButtonShy, I'm very picky. As you mentioned, import to EU can get expensive.…
I particularly disliked Hunted: Kobayashi Tower. I felt I had too little control over it.
I'm lucky than, in France, we get cheap localizations of basically all Button Shy games. You must not mind the wait though, but I'm excited that Rove is finally becoming available (for the meager amount of 8€). It makes backing Button Shy over-complicated KS campaigns completely irrelevant.
Anything Scott Almes is an automatic pass though. A competent designer, but my vision of fun doesn't match his.