Casual Game Crowdfunding: Potions, Locks, and Trash Cans

Pepper and Carrot: The Potion Contest (Loyalist Games) – Players are attempting to create potions. Each player has a player board on which a series of ingredient tiles are placed in a random order. A deck of order cards is also shuffled. During each round, three order cards are placed face up, with the one on the farthest right being the active order. Every round, all players use the current active order to move around their ingredients. These orders can allow you to push an entire line or column of ingredients one space (moving the tile that was pushed off the board over to the now empty space), swap any two adjacent tiles, or rotate a tile 90 degrees. Tiles have markings which must be lined up with those on another ingredient to connect the two. In order to complete a potion, players must connect all the required ingredients in the correct order. When you complete a potion, you take a token. The first player to earn all three tokens wins the game.

Triplock (Chip Theory Games) – Players are competing to be the first to solve the Master Lock, or in a solo game, you are trying to solve a certain number of rooms before running out of attempts. Each lock is made up of four mechanism chips which are in turn covered up by two failsafe chips. Players draw a diagram card, which shows the order with which to manipulate the mechanisms. You use action dice and your character's abilities in order to discover the mechanism behind the failsafes, and work to align them to match your diagram card.

Trash Pandas (Michael Eskue) – Each player takes on the role of a raccoon, searching through trash cans for treats and treasure. Players earn points by collecting a majority of a card type. On your turn, you roll the die and take the token that matches the result. With each roll you can choose to push your luck and roll again or stop, taking the actions for the tokens you've already rolled. If you ever roll a result that you've already rolled, you bust. During the game you will also draw cards into your hand. You must choose whether to use cards for their abilities, some of which will help you with your rolls, or add them to your stash for points.

Action Cats! (Twogether Studios) – Action Cats! is a storytelling card game about cats. Each round a player is the judge. He draws a cat card and gives the cat a name. The other players then use their cards to tell a story about that cat. Each card is divided into a top half and a bottom half, and to create a story you must use one of each. The judge chooses his favorite and awards the winner the cat card. The player with the most cat cards after nine rounds wins the game.

Firelight (HobbyHorse Games) – Card game meets role-playing, in this game designed to offer a casual introduction to RPGs. One player is the game master and starts the game by choosing one of twenty quest cards that lists both the premise of the story and the five objectives players must progress through. The other players create characters by choosing a character card and drawing personality cards to create a customized backstory. During the game you collect treasure to help you along the way and battle the monsters.

Bushido Breaker (Zachary White) – In this hidden movement deduction game, you either start as a ninja or as a samurai. The ninja is trying to reach the shogun and kill him while the samurai is trying to catch the ninja. On his turn a ninja can kill a samurai in his location, kill one orthogonally adjacent to him, hide, move, or sabotage alarms. If you are the samurai you control multiple samurai spread out across various locations. On your turn you must choose which samurai you are activating, and then what action to take with it. You can use your katana to counter an attack, check the alarm, check exits to see if the ninja has attempted to exit the room, search for a hidden ninja, or move.

Night Clan (Ennio Spione) – Each player has a deck of identical cards. On your turn you draw three cards and must place two of them onto one or two locations. Some card types are played face up while some are played face down. Players have daughter and treasure cards which can potentially score at the end of the game, but also troll cards, which force all cards at the location it is on to be discarded at the end, unless enough mistletoe cards are played to that location. Night Watch cards allow you to move an opponent’s card off the location you just placed it on, or move one of your other cards on to it.