Kodama

The latest game I backed on Kickstarter was Kodama. If you've seen Princess Mononoke, the name might ring a bell. Kodamas were those cute little forest spirits with rotating heads that became extremely popular. In this game, your goal is to grow a tree so that these cute spirits have somewhere to play and stay over the winter. Thanks to the wonderfully cute creative direction and novel gameplay mechanics that are easy to grasp and still pose a nice fun challenge, Kodama quickly became my favourite game to bring to my friends for gaming afternoons.

The central mechanism of growing a tree is brilliant. Each player has their trunk card and every round they add a branch card to expand the tree. A branch card may only be laid over one existing card in a fashion that the connection of the branch looks natural. Especially in the later parts of the game, this makes players position their branches carefully so that there is still room for future expansion and still look for a way to connect the cards so that they look natural.

Boardgames on Kickstarter: They Need You!

Recently I've learned about the Kickstarter site/project. In case you haven't heard about it yet, here's a quick summary: Kickstarter lets you advertise the project of your dreams to the internet public, asking them to fund it. You set a funding goal (let's say $10,000) and if enough people chip in and your project reaches the goal in 30 days, you get the the full amount of funds that might be well over your goal. In case the amount of money doesn't reach your goal, you get nothing, the money goes back to the people who chipped in.

You, however, don't need to have a project to participate in Kickstarter. You can browse hundreds of ongoing funding requests and if any catches your eye, you're invited to help by spending any amount you think is right. Projects usually have several levels and spending certain amount of money usually gets you something from the project owner. For $1 you might get a mention in the credits, for $10 you might get the mention and a promo poster mailed to you, for $20 you might get the product itself. There is anything from Fashion, Computer games, Music, Comics, Film to, what is the focus of this post, Board Games.

I've watched several projects for some time and here is a selection of several Board Games that deserve your attention.

(I am in no way related to Kickstarter or any of the projects. This is merely an enthusiastic post about something really really cool.)