Designers: Atakan Cancourer, Tuna Pamir

Artist: Ali Yagiz Kani

Publisher: Arvis Games Inc.

Genre/Mechanisms: bluffing, card drafting, deck building, hand management, take that, trading, voting

Funding Status: At the time of this posting, Board Royale is already fully-funded.  In fact, pledges currently total more than 5x the initial funding goal with 4 days left to go on the campaign.

Player Count: 2-6

Solo Mode: no

Complexity: light

Risk: high

What It’s About:  It’s Bang! with item-crafting and a desert island setting/theme.

How It Works: Resource and Item cards are shuffled and placed, with the top 4 cards from the Item deck placed out into a card market. Play proceeds clockwise, with each player executing a Resource Phase and an Action Phase. There’s a hand limit of 20 cards (!), and at the beginning of a player’s turn they can discard as many cards as they like and draw that many cards from the Resource Deck. Then, during the Resource Phase, the player can either draw 2 cards from the Resource Deck or steal 1 random Resource card from another player’s hand. During the Action Phase, players can craft items by discarding resources from their hands, as well as make trade offers to the other players. Players can also take actions with their crafted items, some of which include combat and attacks. Attacking will remove resources from other players’ hands, which also function as a sort of health meter. If it drops to 0 and player has no more resource cards in hand, that player is eliminated. When a player is killed, their killer inherits their Item cards. The last player standing wins the game.

Comparisons:  Really, it’s Bang! where players attempt to battle & eliminate each other through card play. Except with item-crafting to give the game more variability and depth. And a desert theme that may call to mind other popular entertainment properties like Lost, Dead Island, and Far Cry.

What Should I Pledge?:
$25 Board Royale – The Island – Base Game: a copy of the base game, rulebook & madbook, Discord access, all stretch goals, and a support credit & thanks.
$61 Board Royale – Survival Edition: everything listed in the pledge above, plus the Kickstarter-exclusive tin box, the NSFW expansion pack, Military expansion pack, Skills expansion pack, Disaster expansion pack, and grab & play Travel Pack.
$152 Board Royale Collector’s Edition: everything listed in the pledge above, plus a numbered Collector’s Edition box instead of the tin box, signed license, and free shipping.
$1,005 The Inventor: a copy of the Survival Edition and a copy of the Collector’s Edition, your name listed in a Special Thanks section, a collaboration with the game’s designers on an item card named after you, and free shipping.

Add-Ons:
$9 Travel Pack
$11 NSFW expansion pack
$14 Military expansion pack
$11 Skills expansion pack
$11 Disaster expansion pack

KS Exclusives:
The Kickstarter Exclusive expansion pack (a collection of the game’s stretch goals), the Madbook (featuring creative uses of the game’s mechanics by the playtesters), the Travel Pack, and the tin box included with the Survival Edition.

All-In Total: Let’s assume you don’t feel the need to pay over $1,000 for the vanity reward of the item card. Let’s also assume you’re not interested in paying almost $100 extra for the Collector’s Edition for the numbered Collector’s Edition box, signed license, or free shipping. Then in the continental U.S. you’re looking at $61 for the Board Royale: Survival Edition and $12 in shipping, for a total of $73.

Board Royale completes its Kickstarter on Saturday, October 5th and tentatively ships in March 2020.