(or here’s a list of what launched yesterday that might deserve a closer look)

Project: Flower Garden

Designer: Thyyen Ta

Artist: Thyyen Ta

Publisher: Thyyen Ta

Genre/Mechanisms: card game, farming, market, race, set collection, take that

Player Count: 2-4

Solo Mode: no

Complexity: light

Risk: HIGH

Summary: “In order to win the game you need to collect 4 of the same color of flowers in your own garden. However there are exactly 4 cards of the same color in the flower deck (total of 20 flower cards with 5 different color set). In order to collect the flower you need, you would have to sabotage, steal, or change color of your flower. Before owning flowers, you have to go through the process of gaining seeds and blooming them with resources. You may sell the flowers to gain income for plan cards. Plan cards will help your garden and/or destroy your neighbors. To add a twist in the game, there is a Queen card that has 2 different personalities: Flower Queen and Weed Queen. One card with 2 sides. Flower Queen is definitely the queen you need in your garden, you would not want to have Weed Queen destroying your garden. To summon the queen in a garden, a player prays for the queen by scarifying a flower or pay the coins. If another player prays for the queen, she will be moving around different garden depending on the prayer choice. The game ends as soon as the first player successfully collected 4 colors of the same flower.”

Base Pledge (w/shipping): $52

All-In (w/shipping): $52, same as above

Campaign Ends: 10/30

Game Ships: Mar. 2022

Funding Status: Currently at 18% with 28 days to go.

Project: Hair of the Dog

Designer: Alexander Jerabek (Far Away)

Artist: Jules Naujoks

Publisher: Cherry Picked Games (Far Away)

Genre/Mechanisms: action points, animals, deduction, memory, modular board, negotiation, set collection, take that

Player Count: 2-8

Solo Mode: no

Complexity: light

Risk: HIGH

Summary: “You are competing to pet the most dogs. Between 2 and 8 players will be running around a dog-friendly pub, trying to pet different dogs. Dogs have some conditions that must be meet before petting, and you’ll have to deduce what those are by either carefully watching your friends or, worse, asking the dog owner through awkward conversation. Players take turns navigating the bar and performing actions, such as trying to pet a dog, trading for the right dog toy, or buying a beverage. As they do so, they’ll slowly drink their beverage (or quickly drink it if they’d like extra actions). Finally, they’ll move a staff member of the bar. If any staff catch a player without a drink in their hand, that player ignominiously earns a shame token. Everyone can make this drink-in-hand mandate worse by calling for toasts; forcing people into the social contract of drinking more. To succeed at dog petting, players have to balance progress with temperance, keep a careful eye on which dogs are getting pet when, and trick others into being caught with neither a dog nor drink.”

Base Pledge (w/shipping): $42

All-In (w/shipping): $90

Campaign Ends: 10/31

Game Ships: Sep. 2022

Funding Status: Currently at 28% with 29 days to go.

Project: Tales from the Red Dragon Inn

Designers: Jennifer Kitzman, Jeff Morrow (The Red Dragon Inn 3, The Red Dragon Inn 4, The Red Dragon Inn 5: The Character Trove), Sam Waller (The Red Dragon Inn: Battle for Greyport, The Red Dragon Inn 4, The Red Dragon Inn 5: The Character Trove)

Artists: Megan Langan, Erin Wong (The Red Dragon Inn: Battle for Greyport, The Red Dragon Inn 5: The Character Trove, The Red Dragon Inn 6: Villains)

Publisher: SlugFest Games (The Red Dragon Inn, The Red Dragon Inn 2, The Red Dragon Inn 3)

Genre/Mechanisms: card game, cooperative game, dice, dice rolling, dungeon crawler, exploration, fantasy, miniatures, multiple maps, once-per-game abilities, scenario/mission/campaign game, solo/solitaire game, turn order: random, variable player powers

Player Count: 1-4

Solo Mode: yes

Complexity: medium-light

Risk: medium-low

Summary: “In Tales you will take on the role of one of the famous characters from The Red Dragon Inn series of games as they tackle their day job of being big damn heroes. The multi-scenario campaign pits the players against game-controlled enemies tailor-made for each illustrated fold-out game map. Each scenario will take you to a new map, with new foes and even a few tricky puzzles to solve. You’ll need to work together with the other players by equipping hero and item cards to support your allies who have their own unique abilities and roles. Each scenario has specific objectives, so how you and your party beat each one varies from “kill all the enemies” to “survive X turns” to “protect this thing until something happens” to “get to this room on the map”. All of the players win the scenario together by completing that scenario’s final objective. They can also all lose together if any one of them are defeated in combat, or in the case of many scenarios, the enemies complete their own AI-controlled objective.”

Base Pledge (w/shipping): $100

All-In (w/shipping): $100, same as above

Campaign Ends: 10/28

Game Ships: Feb. 2023

Funding Status: Funded; currently at 370% with 14 days to go.