Casual Games on Kickstarter: Dice Mining, Stereoscopic 3D, and Shelfies

Dice Miner (Atlas Games) – The game is played over three rounds. Each round the mountain display is filled with dice. On your turn you select one die, which does not have any other dice on top of it, from the mountain and add it to your dice collection. The symbol on the die will have different effects during the scoring phase at the end of the round. However, if you select a die that shows a beer symbol, then at the start of your turn, you can reroll that die and give it to another player which allows you to choose two dice from the mountain, and they can be from either the top or a die that has only one of its two top faces covered. White dice score by collecting a straight set. The longer the set, the more points it is worth. There are also treasure dice, scoring you a point for each treasure symbol showing on them, and blue magic dice, which allow you to reroll dice at the start of the scoring phase. Additionally, there are hazard dice which lose you points, and tool dice which can turn hazards into positive-scoring points if you have the right tools. The scoring phase occurs at the end of each round. At the end of it, you reroll all the dice in your collection (though you can save some results if you have the right tool dice) and these dice will carry over to score in future rounds. The mountain display is then refilled, and another round commences.

The Dead Eye (Pleasant Company Games) – This solo adventure card game is designed to be played either as a regular 2D card game or in stereoscopic 3D mode. The game is about being marooned on an alien planet and attempting to escape. There are two resources in the game, heat (which is bad) and juice (which is good). Each round you draw a card from your deck, and choose whether to avoid its encounter (in which case it will act as heat or juice for your next encounter) or to deal with it. When dealing with an encounter you draw cards from your deck one at a time (between each card you draw, you can choose to avoid the encounter after all).The cards you draw are added either as heat or juice to the encounter based on the icon shown on them. Each encounter has a bad result and a good result, which trigger after you play a certain number of heat or juice cards. Bad results may have you add cards from your hope or strength decks to your discard/draw deck (you lose the game if your hope or strength decks are ever empty), while positive results may grant you items to use or allow you to travel. You win the game by traveling enough distance that you reach the end of the story deck.

Shelfie Stacker (Arkus Games) – Shelfie Stacker is all about building attractive board game collections. The game is played over seven rounds. Each round dice are rolled and the player who is the courier for that round, places the dice in sets of three on each of the delivery box tiles. Each player then chooses a card from their hand (cards are numbered one through eight and each comes with a special ability), and plays it face-down. Players then reveal their card simultaneously and the person who played the lowest number gets to select a delivery box tile first and add its dice to their game shelf. You can use your card's ability to improve placement when adding dice, while any dice that do not fit on your shelf, instead are placed on your shelf of shame.

Matchi (Kyle Davis) – In this 2-player abstract strategy game, you are trying to get all four of your game pieces onto the center tile. There are seven tiles which make up the board. Each tile is divided into six segments, with each segment having a different value. Each turn you roll your dice, which you then use to place a token on the board, move a token, or attack an opponent's token. You place a token by matching one of your dice results with the value of a space around the edge of the board. You move a token by matching a die result with the value of a space adjacent to one of your tokens, or you can also move a token to an adjacent space by matching a die result to the space your token is currently on. Finally, in order to attack an opponent's token you have to pay the movement cost twice in order to move onto an adjacent space with the enemy token. The opponent's piece is then taken off the board and returned to them. You can combine dice to hit a value you require.

Latte Throwdown (Analog Game Studios) – In this dice rolling coffee game, players are competing to create latte art. Each round there are four latte cards on the table, each of which requires you to play certain dice results to complete them. On your turn you roll your dice and then choose where to assign them. Dice can remain on an uncompleted latte card from one turn to the next. You can also use your dice to activate barista cards which grant you a onetime special ability or add dice to your dice pool. The round ends once the last latte card has been completed. New ones are drawn and another round starts. The barista cards remain the same until a player uses dice to change them. The first player to reach twenty points wins the game. You can read our review of Latte Throwdown here.

Mini Rogue (Nuts! Publishing) – Mini Rogue is a 1-2 player cooperative game, inspired by roguelike games. The dungeon is made up of nine facedown cards. Players start by flipping over the first room card and resolving it, rolling dice to deal with traps or monsters. You then reveal the room cards adjacent to you, and must choose which one to move to next to explore and resolve. Players collect resources in rooms which they must in turn choose how to spend in order to prepare themselves for future rooms. The last card at the bottom left of the dungeon hides a boss monster. Once you've defeated it you have to spend resources to eat before you can proceed to the next level of the dungeon.

Pizza Rush (Jof Games) – Players are trying to be the first to use all their ingredient cards, while stacking pizza toppings onto pizza bases. But you cannot place an ingredient card with a value lower than the card that has most recently been played on it. The first player to get rid of all their topping cards is the winner of the round. You start each round by shuffling all the topping cards and dealing them out evenly to each player. You then shuffle the pizza base cards and place them face-down on the table. A player then draws a base card and plays it face-up. It will say either x1, x2, or x3. This dictates how many matching topping cards you must play when adding to the pizza. Players then take turns playing a card onto the base (players may pass if they cannot or do not choose to play). The last player to add an ingredient wins the pizza and will play the first card when the next base card is drawn. At the beginning of each round after the first, players will start by passing cards to each other based on the order in which they emptied their hands during the previous round.

Disclosure: unless otherwise noted, we have not seen or played any of the above games. Our assessment of each is based on the information given on the crowdfunding project page.

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