Alright, how have I wasted my money recently… Quickly, because I have a lot to get through. Why do I do this?
Embers
A solo mini-game with just 18 cards. You play a group of adventurers who have stopped for the night in an evil forest. Your campfire is all that keeps the teeth of foul creatures from your necks. When the campfire dies — you die.
It’s another wallet game from Jason Tagmire’s Button Shy Games, designed by Steve Aramini. If this sounds like Rock Manor Games’ “Set a Watch”, well, you couldn’t be more… right. It’s exactly that game, in solo, pocket form.
The Many Odd Origins of Even Steven
Even Steven is a superhero who precisely duplicates the power of his evil opponents in order to prove that, in an even fight, good triumphs. He can make any construct out of his golden light.
I’d never heard of Even Steven, but some of the artists and writers were in BlueSky pushing it, and I read some chapters and liked it, and so here we are.
Paper Apps: Labyrinth
Having wowed us with no-two-alike flip pads of golf games, 4X space exploration games and rogue-like dungeon runs, Tom Brinton dips into the flip-and-write genre once more with Paper Apps: Labyrinth, which gives you a 3D maze to run around in, fight monsters, collect treasure. I have his dungeon one which is a lot of fun, and I’m looking forward to playing this one.
The Zach Attack! Scratch ‘n Solve Puzzle Pack
It would be a lot more fun if it were the “Scratch ‘n Sniff” puzzle pack. Just saying.
The latest from Zachtronics’ Zach Barth leaves the video puzzle and programming games (not to forget the lovably weird solitaire games) behind and moves to the physical realm with this pack of puzzle games that you scratch off to solve. I loved the Zachtronics games, so this was an instant back for me.
Pocket RPG
Wanna play a tabletop RPG but hate lugging a bunch of books, minis, terrain and such with you? This puts everything you could possibly need into a box that, folded up, is smaller than the paperback version of Stephen King’s “The Stand”, probably.
It doesn’t actually come with the books. It is rules agnostic, and so you provide the rules, but it provides everything else. It was too cute not to back.
The Red Dragon Inn Allies: Jin vs Greppa
The Red Dragon Inn is always welcome to the table on game nights, and it’s the sort of game that even the kids can play and have just as much fun as the adults. I insta-back all their Kickstarters, and everyone loves seeing who the new characters are going to be.
Jin is a karaoke bard. He’s gonna get you to join him on the stage and get that spotlight on you… do your best or die trying. Greppa is a goblin bard who will play whatever she likes and you will like it too — or else prepare to be viciously mocked.
Mystery Dice
You never know what you’re going to get with Mystery Dice, and that’s both the fun and the fear with it. I like their dice, but I have a lot of dice now, so I just mostly backed for the “Weird Stuff” and “Weirder Stuff” and even the “Not-So-Weird Stuff” — unusual dice sets. They do make really cool gifts.
This will probably be the last time I back one of their Kickstarters; there’s Weird Stuff from previous Kickstarters I’d have wanted, and there were some I wanted but didn’t get because they’re random. Next time, I’ll just order the ones I want directly from them after they have fulfilled the Kickstarter. I will be unhappy if there is a set I would have wanted but I didn’t get because I didn’t pay for all the sets to guarantee I’d get that one set.
DragonStrike
DragonStrike aims to bring the old SSI first person dragon combat simulator to the tabletop by providing pre-colored, huge, dragon minis and the airy aerie in which to battle them.
The cool thing about this Kickstarter is that everywhere but the USA has gotten theirs already! Trump’s tariffs have made the whole thing uncertain for the States. Last I heard, they were in Canada and I guess they were going to ship them through Venezuela on a fast boat to a port in the USA. I hope nothing bad happens to them.
Mystery Under Magi-Mart
Lastly, for now, a fully-illustrated choose-your-own adventure book about the trials of a poor stock-person who was asked only to restock some potions in an item shop’s basement and got lost in a dungeon along the way.
I’ve been waiting for this for a long time, but they’re only a year late so far, so that’s better than average. I could keep going to things I have been waiting for for many years, and I am not talking about Squadron 64 or whatever the single-player Star Citizen campaign is called. But I am waiting for that, too.
The latest update shared their pre-production copy, and this thing is tiny. I was expecting something pop-up book sized, for some reason. You could fit this inside the Pocket RPG box with room to spare.
I mean, I’m sure I’ll love it when I get it, and I’m sure my granddaughter will love it when I re-gift it. But still. A little larger would have been nice.
There, another list of things I spent too much money on and may or may not ever get. We’ll see if these turn into games in my hand or donations to people I will never, ever see again. I won’t tell you how many of the campaigns I backed and wrote about a year ago are still not here. More than a couple.
Click the links on each description to go to the Kickstarter page. Embers is live right now; the others may have options to get them outside of the campaign if you really want them.
I do find it a little ironic that Pocket RPG gives you everything you need to play a TTRPG except the rules. I always thought the USP of role-playing games was that the rules were all you needed. Didn’t the whole sales pitch used to be that you just needed the books and your imagination? Okay, and dice, but some systems only used regular six-siders, which everyone already has.
Seems odd that these days (And for a long time now.) you have to have all the right miniatures and maps and floor plans before you can even begin. At least the PRPG folks are kind enough to say you don’t *have* to paint the miniatures…
lol… it’s true. But even back in the 70s, when I was a kid playing AD&D for the first time, we were using maps and random stuff to represent our characters as we played. Me, I’m all about trying to make cool play areas — I don’t have to 3D print everything for Frosthaven, and HeroQuest, and Terraforming Mars, I just like to.
I’m envisioning something here like the Gloomhaven Buttons & Bugs mini RPG, which might be a really good fit for this. We’ll see. I have some ideas on how I want to play this. Maybe it can be setting for an “Adventures in Monopoly”-like webcomic. I haven’t done one of those in awhile.
Paper Apps: Labyrinth has caught my eye. I might be late to the Kickstarter, but may preorder this one. Never heard of it before, but it looks neat! Thanks for the awesome list!
The two others of his that I have (I don’t have the golf one) are really cool, and you can play more than one a day if you like 🙂 That was always a problem with me with the Sundial adventure calendars. I’d lose interest, miss days, then struggle to catch up.