Tabletop Games Crowdfunding Roundup - June 1st, 2022

Does your inbox fill up every Tuesday with Kickstarter emails? Well, mine does - so I decided to start writing my thoughts on new tabletop gaming Kickstarters every Wednesday. Keep in mind, most of these are based on initial impressions and looking at the Kickstarter video.

Do you like Batman? What about Roguelikes? Also, remember Runescape? Yeah that's the kind of campaigns that you'll be hearing about this week. Lets' goooo……

Deathly Thrones

The subheading on this Kickstarter drew me in. It claimed to be a "solo print and play roguelike game". Roguelikes are a genre that I believe to be more of a video game concept. A player progresses through randomized challenges, earning special buffs along the way. When the character dies, they restart at the beginning of the adventure, but typically keep some type of experience to help them for the next time. This campaign is only $1, and uses a normal deck of playing cards in its gameplay.

The simplicity and earnestness of this Kickstarter is also my biggest gripe with it. Full disclosure though: I did back this Kickstarter. It's rare that I can back at $1 and it feel like I'm actually helping this game happen, but when the funding goal is under $100, that's a bit different. However, I am very much an artwork and components person. This is why when companies come to me with games that are prototypes I refuse to review them because the lack of components will sour my opinion. I hope that this campaign will help the designer get some money for a better looking version. I would totally buy a custom 52 card deck for this game with appropriate artwork on the cards, etc. Just a bit more artwork and graphic design would make this a must have game for me, especially at the price.

Colorful inserts with original artworks for popular games!

I've heard of e-Raptor before, but I have not been fortunate enough to try out one of their inserts personally. I like to keep my head in the accessories game that way I can recommend solid companies instead of companies with not-so-great CEOs. No, I'm not linking who I'm talking about. Regardless, this campaign is for 11 different e-Raptor board game inserts. Unlike other companies, e-Raptor sets their inserts apart by putting artwork on them and making them very thematic.

You'll have to click to the campaign to see the entire list of games, but the thumbnail above gives you a sense of some of the games that are a part of this campaign. One insert runs for about $38, and you can add on more as you want. One of the games on the list, Black Rose Wars, I have never heard of but looks gorgeous especially in the e-Raptor insert. Sadly, (or is that fortunately for my wallet?) none of the games in this campaign are ones that I own. Many of them are really popular games though, so if you are reading this there's a good chance that you might own one of the games that has an insert. I recommend checking out the list!

Return to Dark Tower Fantasy Roleplaying Game

Um what? I know we are making RPGs of everything these days, but the Dark Tower game from Restoration Games wasn't really top of my list. It's for the "Mazes" RPG system, which I don't think I had heard about before this campaign. That's a great way to get a new audience interested in a more indie RPG system, that's for sure. I'm not knocking Restoration Games for this, as it's being done by another studio so Restoration is probably just licensing this out.

Reading through the campaign, this feels like it should have been written as an adventure, not as if it's going to be a whole game that you can play multiple campaigns in. The "Maze Controller" (Editor's note: really, stop making other names aside from 'GM'. It's really dumb sounding when you do that.) takes the players through a 3-5 session game. And I'm only rolling one die?!?! That's the first thing I gleamed from the info on the Mazes system, and I'm already out. I looooove rolling dice. I'm much more likely to pick this up and hack it to another system than I am to roll just a single die.

BATMAN: The Arkham Asylum Files

Again I say, um what? I'm a pretty big Batman fan, as I explained last week. So it's pretty hard for a game to be based on the Batman property and me NOT know anything about it before the Kickstarter launches. Then again, I might not be alone in that feeling as this game only has $38k out of its $250k goal as of the time of this writing. For a big property like Batman, that's abysmally low. Then again, it could be that the creators used an actual goal number instead of going low and going for stretch goals. It's ambitious to say the least.

When I say ambitious, I don't just mean in the pricing scheme. Although $169 is a lot of money, there appears to be a lot of game in this box. Billed as an "adventure game meets escape room meets augmented reality game", that tells me nothing about the game. The video makes it seem like there will be puzzles to solve, cut scenes to view with your phone, etc. But I don't get the sense of how it plays, and there's not a lot of information about it on the campaign. They did get an endorsement from Chris Ramsay, which is a big deal though. Gives me the impression this is going to be more puzzle box than game. Too many unknowns to back at this point, definitely puts the game at "I need to see this at a con first".

RuneScape Kingdoms: Shadow of Elvarg

Oh man, remember Runescape? That game when you were too broke to play World of Warcraft with all the cool kids but still wanted that MMO feeling? Well someone decided it should be a board game now. Specifically, Steamforged Games did, which isn't surprising as they have a habit of turning video games into tabletop games. Thus there's a lot of pedigree on this game, increasing the likelihood that this game will be good. Plus, there are some awesome minis…even one I swear looks like and really hope is a chef.

Will I back this game though? No. Not because I think it's going to be horrible, but because I don't have much of a connection to Runescape. Yeah, I played it, but I remember next to nothing about the game. "Remember Runescape" is about as much nostalgia as I have. Will I play the game if someone I know buys it? Hell yeah. Definitely seems like the kind of game that is up my alley. However, I just spent $300 at my local store preordering myself a nice birthday present and now my wallet is out for blood.

Note: I generally assume I know nothing. So if I've missed something, let me know in the comments. Or let me know on Twitter or Facebook. If you like these types of posts, consider subscribing to our patreon.