Casual Game Crowdfunding: Planks, Potatoes, and Planes

Plank & Rank (Paul Partlow) – Each player must build their own bridge across the river while also moving their ten army tokens across that bridge. The first player to get their army across the water wins the game. At the start of the game, each player is dealt five plank cards. Your turn is divided into two phases. During the first phase, you draw a plank card either from the draw pile or the discard pile, and then you can place a new plank on your bridge, swap out a plank in your bridge with one in your hand, or discard a card to the discard pile. Each plank card has a number on it and when building your bridge the planks must be placed with their numbers in descending order. During the second phase of your turn, you move your army by rolling a die and then choosing to either scout or march. If you scout, you move one army token the number of spaces equal to your die roll. If you march, you move the number of tokens equal to the die roll one space.

Potato Pirates (Codomo) – This card game brings together potatoes, piracy, and programming. Each player is a potato pirate, trying to be the first to collect all seven potato king cards in order to win. The game has you use programming concepts, such as functions, conditionals, and loops, when playing your cards to create more powerful attacks against other potatoes. On your turn you draw two cards, reveal any bug cards you draw (the last player who shouts potato king must then pay two potatoes), and then can perform attacks with your cards. You buy ships during the game and can move your potato crew from ship to ship, and at any time during the game you can always play a surprise pirate attack card to give you an extra boost or cause trouble for an opponent.

Now Boarding (Tim Fowers) – In this real time cooperative game, players are working together to run an airline. Every player is one plane in the airline. You move your plane across the map, picking up and dropping off passengers around the country. Different planes can take different routes. Each passenger you draw from the deck has a starting location and a drop off point. Players all agree on a plan for dealing with the passengers and getting them to their destinations. The timer is then flipped and you have thirty seconds to take all of your actions in any order you want. At the end of the round, any passengers that are still stuck in airports get an anger cube. If a passenger ever has four, they leave. If three customers leave, you lose the game. Also in between rounds, players use the money they earned from happy passengers to buy upgrades for their planes such as increasing their plane’s speed or how many customers it can hold. The game also features weather, which can make different paths shorter or longer depending on whether or not there is a storm.

Cheese Quest (Phil Schadt) – The players start in the mouse nest in the center of the board and cat and cheese tokens are placed around the edges of the board as traps. On your turn you can spend three actions. You can move, pick up cheese, draw a pantry card, or play cards. Cards can do helpful things such as remove traps from the game, set other players back, or control cats. If cats move onto the same space as a mouse, that mouse drops any cheese it is holding and cannot move until the cat moves away. If your mouse is on the same space with two cats, it drops any cheese and runs all the way back to the nest. The first player to successfully bring back two pieces of cheese to the nest wins the game.

Alexandria (LudiCreations) – Players are racing against time as the library of Alexandria burns. The library is built with a random selection of tiles which will be placed in different shapes and patterns each game. Each room also gets four random pieces of furniture. The game takes place over five rounds and in each round you have a set amount of time to move around the library and save things. You spend time to draw extra cards, move, or play cards. Each player has their own unique character which comes with their own unique set of action cards and goals. One player might wish to save as much as they can from the burning building, while another may be trying to destroy it.

Werebeasts (Bezier Games) – A goal card is placed between each player. Each player looks at the two goal cards next to him and must try to collect the werebeast cards that match their goal cards. Each player is also given eight werechow tokens. On your turn you must always auction off a werebeast card to the other players, but you may also accuse a player of collecting a certain type of werebeast (though you can never accuse them of trying to collect the type you're collecting!). If you're correct, that player is out of the game and you take all his cards. If you're wrong, you're out of the game and the player gets your cards. During the auction phase, you draw an auction card and players may use both their werebeast cards and their werechow tokens to bid. The game ends when there are only two players remaining or all auction cards have been used. Players score one point for each werebeast they collected which matched one of the goal cards.

Conspiracy Theory (Steve Jackson Games) – In this party game you are trying to construct the best conspiracy. You start with ten cards from the white deck, and a different player each turn is the judge. The judge draws a card from the black deck which begins the conspiracy. The black card is passed to the player on the judge's left who matches it with one of their white cards, creating a conspiracy. The black card is passed around the table with each player choosing one of their white cards to play with it and trying to explain why their conspiracy is the best. The judge chooses his favorite and that player gets to keep the black card. The player with the most black cards at the end of the game, wins.