Casual Games on Kickstarter: Wizard Kitties and Food Fights

Wizard Kittens (Magpie Games) – Players are adorable wizard kittens who have accidently unleashed curses into the library. You must work together to defeat all the curses, but only one player will be the victor. Each turn, you draw one card from the components deck and add it to your personal ritual circle. You then cast one of your four spells such as summon, which allows you to draw another card, or sling, which moves one card to another ritual circle. You then check to see if you have the components to defeat any of the curses. If Professor Whiskers is drawn from the component deck before all the curses have been defeated, the player with the fewest cards in their ritual circle wins the game. If all the curses were defeated, the player who earned the most points from defeating curses wins the game. When the Chaos Cat is drawn from the deck, a new rule is introduced into the game and more curses appear.

Taco Fight (El Dorado Games) – A real-time six minute cooperative game about an epic food fight. At the beginning of Taco Fight, a series of angry, attacking tacos are revealed. Players have a chance to discuss a game plan, and then a timer is started. Players flip through their decks of cards looking for ingredients to build tacos, from tortillas to toppings, and trying to make them powerful enough to block the attacking tacos. Use the fists on an ingredients card to punch enemy tacos and forks to help your allies stab them. Players can also help each other by calling out what cards they need and passing ingredients to each other.

Throw Throw Burrito (Exploding Kittens) – Self-described as half card game and half dodgeball, Throw Throw Burrito features stuffed toy burritos that are placed in the center of the table. Players pass cards around, trying to get three of a kind in order to score points. When you collect three burrito cards, you grab the squishy toys and throw them around the table. There are different types of burrito cards, however. Some will have only two players throwing burritos at each other, sometimes it will be the entire table, sometimes players will have a western-style burrito duel. Get hit by a burrito and you lose points.

Thrive (Adam's Apple Games) – In this abstract strategy board game, players are lotus flowers competing for control of a pond. Each turn you move one of your six pieces and place two pegs into your pieces. Each piece can hold multiple pegs. Your piece's movement options depend on the placement of the pegs within it. Move onto a space with an opponent's piece and you capture it, removing it from the board. Once a player has only one piece left on the board, he is defeated.

Age of Civilization (Ice Makes) – Each round players take turns selecting a different civilization, either choosing to raise it and make it theirs or choosing to conquer it. Players then choose actions on the action row. The action row has eight cards that are placed in a random order at the beginning of the game. There are also three permanent action cards that are available every round and placed above the cards on the far left of the action row. You may select actions from the three permanent action cards or the three actions below them. At the end of each round you will move the permanent action cards one card over so that one new action will become available while losing access to another. This small box civilization game can be played in thirty minutes and is for one to four players.

Jabberwocky (Blue Beard Entertainment) – Beware the Jabberwock! Jabberwocky is a collection of five games that can all be played with the same gorgeously illustrated eighteen cards and a selection of gems. Bandersnatch is a solo game in which you play a card onto the table, trying to surround cards to score gems. There is a two player map making game, a two-to-three player area control map, and even a negotiation game for three to seven people in which players take turns being the dealer and attempt to trick the other players into busting. Each game comes with a reference card for each player.

Life Siphon (Lay Waste Games) – Each player is assigned one of the four corners of the board, starts the game with twenty health, and is dealt one card. Three more cards are flipped face up to the side. You can spend life points to summon up to three familiars and send them into the battle area to fight. The goal of the game is to defeat the player on your left. You may only attack the player on your left, which means you will be defending from the player on your right. You may also spend life to acquire cards, some of which can be used on your turn while others can be used at any time. The first player to bring their target down to zero health points wins the game.