Casual Game Crowdfunding: Scrapyards, Presses, and Ghosts

Penny Press (Asmadi Games) – Players run newspapers in 19^th century New York. Send out reporters to cover different beats, such as crime, war, and politics. Different stories have different point values depending on how many stories are in that news beat and how many reporters are after those stories. You choose when to recall your reporters and go to press with their articles, but wait too long and the other players will scoop your news. At the end of the game bonus points are awarded to the players that covered each beat the best and the player with the highest score wins.

Ghosts Love Candy (5^th Street Games) – You're a ghost. And what's the best part about being a ghost? Eating candy on Halloween. Each player is dealt cards that determine which types of candy they like best and consequently which ones will earn them the most points. Players want to grab their highest earning candy, but also candy that would score other players lots of points. Ghosts choose which child they will be taking the candy from. The children all have special abilities based on their Halloween costumes that a player must use when they take the child's candy. If a ghost is responsible for making a child sick, that child will count against the ghost's points at the end of the game.

Scrapyard Empire (Galliant Games) – A card game for 1 to 4 players, with a 30 to 60 minute playtime. Be the first to build two inventions and win the game. Players are dealt parts, machines, invention blue prints, and a character card with unique abilities. On their turn a player may chose an action, such as draw cards, roll dice to go through the discard pile, trade or steal cards from opponents. They may then choose to build things. Players use parts to build machines which they in turn use to build their fantastic inventions such as Time Machines, Death Clocks and Subterranean Submarines.

Dilemma (Braintree Games) – Dilemma is a two player game that takes inspiration from classic board games like Chess, Stratego, and Tug of War. Players move their pawn along the board, picking up tiles that will score points at the end of the game. One player may only move horizontally along rows, while the other may only move vertically along columns. The tiles themselves can change the board, moving other tiles or blocking players.

Bedtime Heroes (Steve Venezia) – A strategic card and dice game about defending your sleeping children from the evil bedtime monsters. It has beautiful artwork and the game has been designed to be entertaining for both adults and children. Players may choose to take two actions: build up resources, fight monsters, or perform shenanigans with special toys they can collect. Players earn points for defeating monsters, but lose them if their child wakes up. A free print-and-play version is available.

G'Zoink (Andy Hopp) – Giggities absorb traits from people. You play as giggity giggers trying to nab giggities and steal the traits from them. Unfortunately, giggities take both good and bad traits from people, so your giggity gigger might end up with a bad knee, a blue hairy tongue, or who knows what else. A short 20 minute card game, with simple rules and fun, creative artwork.

Escape from Alcatraz (Gryphon Games, U.S. Games Systems) – In the fifth game in the Mystery Rummy series, you take on the role of guards attempting to foil escape plans from Alcatraz. The game is played with an action deck, a plans deck, and an escapee deck. Foil escape plans to win points. The first player to reach 100 or more points wins the game. New plans are started when a player puts down three or more matching plan cards. When a player adds matching cards to their own or other players' escape plans they take an action card and follow its instructions. As soon as there are 8 matching plan cards in play, a player may choose to foil that escape plan after playing an eligible escapee card.