Kickstarter Roundup

Hey folks,

To make up for the late review this week, I've decided to get you a list of the latest and greatest games on Kickstarter. If you don't know what Kickstarter is, it's a website that offers developers a chance to independently fund their projects. Projects range from movies to businesses, and anything in between. Most important to us here are the games, of course! Games like Alien Frontiers, Eaten By Zombies!, and Eminent Domain have all been made possible by Kickstarter.

Here's a list of what I believe are the best games on Kickstarter. Some are ending soon, some have nearly two months; some are funded, and some could use your help. Go spend some money!

D-Day Dice

D-Day Dice is a dice game set in World War Two. Players are Allied soldiers, rolling dice to perform actions on their turn. In an abstract sense, it's a resource management game. The game looks incredibly well produced, and I'm a sucker for dice games. Follow this for more info.

Empires of the Void

Empires of the Void is a 4X game promising several paths to victory and emphasizing theme. Each player chooses a unique race and begins the game. Want politics? Got it. Want tech trees? They're here. How about exploration? You betcha. And conflict, gotta have the conflict right? Of course. Check it out, here.

Islandis: A World of Lucidia Boardgame

Islandis looks like a modern gem. It's a big box game that blends together the mechanics of some amazing euro games into what looks like a wonderfully original package. It's got worker placement, dice, resource management and more. To help fund this game, go here.

Kings of Air and Steam

Kickstarter veterans Tasty Minstrel Games return after their incredibly succesful Eminent Domain for round two. Kings of Air and Steam is a steampunk route management game involving trains and airships and the delivery of goods. Each player takes control of one of 12 (maybe more depending on funding) characters and begins the game. To get involved, go here.

Miskatonic School for Girls

I love H.P. Lovecraft. He was a revolutionary writer and birthed the modern horror. This game is based in the Cthulhu mythos, but with a fun twist. In Miskatonic School for Girls, each player represents a house (a la Harry Potter) of students, and is trying to attract the best and brightest young girls. At its core, Miskatonic School for Girls is a deckbuilder but with the unique twist that you also build your opponents deck. On your turn, you buy new girls for your house and faculty, who are actually beasts of the Mythos in disguise. Each player's house begins the game with 20 sanity, the last house with any sanity is the winner. For more information, go here.

Sanitarium

Sanitarium is a survival-horror adventure card game (thats a mouthful) set in a sanitarium. The players are trying to find their three Safe Items in order to regain their sanity and escape the terrifying sanitarium. The game is a quick "superfiller" for 1-4 players, and is produced by Asmadi, the producers of Innovation. Want to get a copy? Go here.

Survival Camp

Survival Camp is a card game set in a zombie apocalypse. On a player's turn, the player rolls a die which dictates the action now available to him/her. The ultimate goal is to build four out of the five tasks available to you. Each task requires a certain amount of resources, which can be drawn from the deck or stolen from the other player. Support this innovative new game here.

Zong Shi

Zong Shi is Gryphon Games' second endeavor on Kickstarter. This marks a trend of bigger companies looking to Kickstarter to help offset costs. Love it or hate it, it's a cheap way to get an awesome looking game. In Zong Shi, players take on the role of aspiring master craftsmen. Through the game, players will be trying to create their masterpieces by collecting the needed resources. Get a copy here.

Confusion: Espionage and Deception in the Cold War

Confusion: Espionage and Deception in the Cold War is Stronghold Games' 2011 2-player abstract strategy game. As is Stronghold's way, Confusion: Espionage and Deception in the Cold War is a rerelease of the 1992 abstract strategy game Confusion, with upgraded components and a sleek new design. In Confusion, players try to get the top-secret briefcase from the center of the playing board to the opponent's first row. The trick is, you don't know how your pieces move, and must deduce the information through trial and error. So, will you be left you scratching your chin wanting more, or will you just be mind-numbingly confused?

Components

Confusion comes with 26 playing pieces in two different colors, 1 briefcase-piece, 6 variant tokens, 1 game board, a rule book, 2 player books and 3 dry-erase pens. All of the physical pieces used in the game are colored bakelite, giving them a solid, sturdy feel to them. They're also ingeniously created. Each player gets 13 pieces in their color. Each piece has a recession in the center for a smaller piece to slide in. There are 13 pieces that depict the movement unique to that piece, and at the beginning of the game you randomly assign the movement pieces to your opponents pieces, which face away from your opponent. The pieces slide in snugly and comfortably, so you don't have to worry about them popping out mid-game.

Gameplay

The game itself is fairly simple. After you have placed all of the movement pieces in your opponent's playing pieces facing you, you can begin.  On your turn you only do one thing: attempt to move a piece. The other player will then look at the piece and tell you whether or not you can move in the desired way. You cannot see how your piece is allowed to move, but your opponent can. After your opponent tells you yes or no on your movement, you take your dry erase pen and your player book, and you can (hopefully) eliminate some of the possible movement types. Eventually, you will start deducting which pieces can move in which ways and you can begin formulating a strategy. 

To win, you must get take the briefcase from the center of the board to the opponent's first row. If you ever move into a space that is occupied by an opposing player's piece, you capture that piece a la Checkers. Careful planning, mental fortitude and a bit of luck will decide the victor.

Conclusion

Confusion truly is a great game, but it's not without its flaws. The rulebook needs some work, in my opinion. The rules are 6 pages from  introduction to variants. It's nice that it is so succinct and short but it is, at times, vague and confusing. For example, some movement pieces have a lock symbol on them. The rulebook explains this rather poorly, saying that pieces with this symbol "are not always able to return to their previous square next turn depending on what movement you select for them", and that the symbol is for reference only. Inquiry on this reveals that the lock symbol merely means that, because of the nature of the movement type, sometimes the piece cannot move back into its previous position. For example, if a piece can move x number of spaces straight forwards and diagonal backwards, then if it moves diagonal it cannot return to the previous space because it can only move straight forward. Why put a special symbol on the piece for something so obvious?

Additionally, the rulebook's explanation of how to win is one sentence long on the first page under the description of gameplay and contents. I may be alone on this, but I would expect to find how to win the game after the rules on how to play the game, or at least within the actual rules of the game. 

To add to the confusion, the only diagram in the rulebook is for the initial piece placement during set up and there are no examples to site. The board is an 11x11 grid, with the first and last columns being considerably darker and containing a nuclear symbol. This is only used in a variant, but is so pronounced that it creates questions during gameplay. The explanation is found on the last page of the rulebook in the variants section. Again, I may be alone on this, but I don't look for explanations of the anatomy of the board in the variants sections.

All of that may seem nit-picky, but it's because this game reeks of quality. Everything about this game - from the art, to the components, to the gameplay - shows just how much work was put in to creating the best possible game that Stronghold could, but it has these minor oversights that nag at me. The flaws are not enough to detract from your enjoyment of the game, and are purely superficial. All in all, Confusion: Espionage and Deception in the Cold War stands as an amazingly well-produced 2-player game with near limitless replayability.

For more information on Confusion: Espionage and Deception in the Cold War, check out its entry on BoardGameGeek, and for information on where to purchase this great game and others, check out Stronghold Games' website.