Hey, hey, Geekly Gang! Kyra Kyle here with another week of Geek News. The Kansas City Renaissance Fair was fantastic. I had a blast. We have plenty of new releases in board games and video games. We even have some tabletop RPG new releases. What? That’s right. GameFound’s RPG Party returns. I’m so glad they’re making this an annual event. Woot! Without any further ado, let’s talk about some games.
Everdell Journeys Launches on KickStarter
Set out from the hustle and bustle of the big city and see the cozy world of Everdell on your own two paws in Everdell Journeys.
In this card-drafting adventure, you’ll lay down a path of cards featuring the breathtaking landmarks, riveting cities, and new friends you’ll find on the road. Send your traveler along the path of cards to activate them, scoring points and gaining resources. Chart your course wisely and score powerful combos based on the cards in your path, filling your journal with memories to share by the hearth at your journey’s end!
Thank you, Tycoon Games, for the description. My spouse and I love the Everdell series. We have almost everything from the base game and adore Everdell Duo. Tycoon Games has done a good job with its Everdell spin-off games so far. That’s a good sign for Everdell Journeys. While Everdell Duo offered a campaign and co-op variants of the original game, Everdell Journeys uses card-drafting. Yes! According to the publisher, Everdell Journeys takes between thirty minutes to an hour to play. That tracks for a card-drafting game. I like those games’ ability to speed up gameplay. The picture above has me a little concerned about the game’s icons. There’s a lot going on with the symbols at the bottom of “Honeypaw.” Still, Everdell hasn’t missed yet with one of its spin-offs. Everdell Journeys deserves attention.
And we get more than one Everdell spin-off game with this campaign. Each pledge comes with a free copy of Everdell Gather, which is a card game variant of Everdell. I like it when longer games, like Everdell, condense its concepts into a card game that’s easier to get to the table. Games of Everdell Gather take around twenty minutes. Yes, please. And we get two Everdell spin-offs for the price of one. Yes, yes, y’all! Everdell Journeys offers pledges that range between $49 and $699. $50 for two games isn’t bad. If you’re interested in Everdell Journeys, check out its KickStarter page.
Catvale Launches on KickStarter
Each player shapes their cat’s path: will you be the aggressor, stealing prestige and robbing opponents of their dignity? Or perhaps you’ll focus on foraging and construction, fancying up your backyard with luxurious structures? Live off adventure by completing quests, fulfilling ambitions, and dueling for glory, or dominate the market through cunning auctions and hiring the best workers? With multiple paths to victory and high replayability, Catvale offers a delightful mix of strategy, luck, and creativity, where the future of the land rests in the paws of the most cunning and ambitious cat.
Thank you, FU Dice, for the description. I haven’t heard much about Catvale before this week. This game sounds like a winner with my family. My oldest daughter loves cats. Catvale has RPG elements, dice rolling, worker placement, and tile placement. If combined properly, these are some of my favorite board game mechanisms and Catvale could be a killer game. I love the artwork. The components look like good to great quality. FU Dice is a new company. While there’s always a risk with newer board game companies, the people behind FU Dice have a history in the board game design/production space with Glass Cannon Unplugged, who made the Apex Legends, Don’t Starve, and Dying Light board games. The company may be new, but the designer (Lukasz Burdowski) and the people running FU Dice have plenty of experience.
Catvale offers multiple pledge levels, ranging $79 – $499. The highest level offers premium wooden pieces. If you’re interested in Catvale, check out its KickStarter page.
Dice Commandos Infestation Launches on GameFound
The sequel to Dice Commandos, Infestation is a tactical dice puzzle game where you control a team of elite commandos facing an evolving alien threat.
Battle rogue androids, powerful company men and the brooding alien queen. Complete objectives, and fight to survive using dice, weapons, and deadly abilities.
Choose 1 of 6 missions and an enemy faction type to battle against. Each round you will use your commandos to perform 3 actions; move/fight, train, deploy, load-outs and completing objectives. Your commandos are dice that have special abilities and move according to their pip values. You will move your commandos around the map strategically fighting enemies and setting up the conditions to complete your mission objectives.
You must complete you mission objectives before time runs out or before your commando team is defeated by the alien threat!
Thank you, Solo Game of the Month, for the description. And, yes! We have another board game from Solo Game of the Month. I love this company. It offers a lot of game for not a lot of money and still manages to make quality games. As the name implies, Solo Game of the Month produces a lot of great solo games, a growing trend in modern board gaming. Don’t have a dedicated gaming group? Play solo games. We missed the original Dice Commandos when it originally released, but we caught its sequel, Dice Commandos Infestation. The original game paid homage to Predator, and Infestation looks to do the same with Starship Troopers. Oh, yeah! This’ll be fun.
If you’re interested in Dice Commandos Infestation, check out its GameFound page.
Tres Tesoros Launches on GameFound
Tres Tesoros is a fast-paced card game for 2 to 8 players that combines strategy, luck, and treasure hunting.
Players roll a custom D12 dice at the start of their turn to determine how many cards they draw and how many actions they can take. Throughout the game they collect Gem cards, protect them with Shields or Mirrors, and use special action cards to disrupt their opponents and gain an advantage.
The goal is to complete a winning collection of Gems before anyone else. Easy to learn and quick to play, Tres Tesoros offers constant interaction and unexpected twists where a single roll can change the course of the game.
Thank you, Dreamkeepers Games, for the description. Tres Tesoros has a simple premise, and sometimes, that’s all you need. It looks like an easy game to learn and claims to scale well, supporting up to eight players. I haven’t yet played Tres Tesoros, so I don’t have an opinion there. The game flow is roll the die (a twelve-sided die), follow the directions of the die face you rolled by playing gems (cards for points) or attacking your opponents (cards to rid your opponents of points?). Like I said, simple and quick. While I can’t imagine Tres Tesoros’s pledges costing too much, it is on GameFound, so we don’t have an exact dollar amount. If you’re interested in Tres Tesoros, check out its GameFound page.
Sub-Zero Launches on GameFound
As a faction of Arctic animals take over territories and stockpile food to survive the winter. Fight the cold, avoid humans, and escape the polar bears!
In Sub-Zero, you lead a faction of arctic animals chosen from Walrus, Goose, Musk Ox, Bald Eagle, Arctic Fox, and Lemming.
The first player of the turn rolls a set of dice indicating the actions available for that turn, the players in clockwise order choose which dice to use and remove it from the pool available to the others. From the season’s black or white dice set, you can then place your animals on the board, collect food from a territory and lower its value, use your faction’s special action (each faction is different from the others), or spend points to choose a specific action of the dice
From the blue die of the season, reduce the value of a territory by lowering, place a human scientific expedition on a territory, collect food, or send a Polar Bear against the animals of the other factions. The game takes place in 15 rounds divided into 3 seasons: spring, summer, and autumn. At the end of the 3 seasons, the player with the most points (in food) wins!
Thank you, Dawn Town Games, for the description. Pictured above is a screenshot from Board Game Simulator, not the final game components. That being said, Sub-Zero looks good from a production standpoint. Dawn Town Games has a few games under their belt and have a good track-record. Sub-Zero features more dice rolling and worker placement (like some other games this week), but adds a twist of area control/manipulation. That makes sense for a game where you’re trying to survive the elements. Sub-Zero introduces some interesting concepts. I like how players take on the roles of animals and must avoid humans. Nice touch! If you’re interested in Sub-Zero, check out its GameFound page.
Steam & Cheese Launches on GameFound
In a world similar to the one we know, mice became the dominant species. They built houses, roads, and cities, and increasingly developed a taste for fine foods — their appetite for cheese grew immeasurably. The better the cheese, the more valuable it became. So they began importing spices from the Far East by zeppelin. These spices are used to make the cheese even more delicious. But cheese production is no simple undertaking. A large machine factory was built, where the resourceful mice constantly sought to install ever-better machines to increase productivity. Sales representatives from all over flocked to the factory operators to purchase cheese. The merchants’ demands are high, but great wealth is granted to those who satisfy these desires.
In this expert level euro game players place dice in various action boards to choose which action with which strength they want to perform. They get resources depending on the dice color and determine the strength with the dice values. Milk is placed on the player board and needs to be transformed to cheese with different machines (actions). They try to fulfill orders and move on various bonus tracks. The player with the most victory points wins.
Thank you, Skellig Games, for the description. Oh my ghost! Steam & Cheese looks adorable. Steampunk mice making cheese is a fantastic theme mashup. I included the entire description for Steam & Cheese because it’s so good. Skellig Games has produces some phenomenal games, too: Darwin’s Journey, On Mars, Anachrony, Voidfall, and Age of Steam. This is a company with an excellent track record. I don’t know what makes Steam & Cheese an “expert level” euro game, but it does look complicated. Whenever I think of an expert level euro game, I think of a game I can lose on turn one. I hope that isn’t the case with Steam & Cheese. But I don’t yet have a game in my collection like that. I could stand to have a least one.
Steam & Cheese looks so good. I may throw caution to the wind and pick up a copy. If you’re interested in Steam & Cheese, check out its GameFound page.
Vault Zero Launches on GameFound
Vault Zero is a combination deck-builder, engine-builder, and action programming game set in a techno-dystopian future. Players take the role of rebel hackers who are all working to build machines that can hack into Vault Zero, the digital fortress that contains the government’s darkest secrets, and expose those secrets to the public and cause a mass uprising.
Players begin each turn with only one actin available to them, but cards they collect can add action economy in three different ways depending on their color. With a full board players will be triggering effects that trigger effects that trigger effects. Find effects that generate Key cards and get 5 of them in your hand at once to steal a secret from the Vault! Steal your 5th secret, and you’ve won the game!
Thank you, Horse Thief Games, for the description. Oh my ghost! I know I already said that once in this week’s write-up, but look at the games in this week’s stable of board games. They all look so good. Vault Zero adds several other elements I love in games. I don’t have too many deck-builders anymore (culled a handful of months ago), and I love it when an engine gets going. Vault Zero also happens to have a great theme, and look at the table presence the titular vault (pictured above) provides. Vault Zero will be one of those games people will stop to look at during a convention. If you’re interested in Vault Zero, check out its GameFound page.
RPG Party Launches on GameFound
Typically, we don’t cover tabletop RPGs on Geekly because there are so many releases each week, but this week is special. GameFound launched its second annual RPG Party. Woo hoo! 23 TTRPGs get featured on the site for the week, and let me tell you, some of the games sound amazing:
Budapest 1899 by Dragonmount Press (delves in to the occult and folklore of Hungary as it prepares to enter the 20th century)
Lights, Dice, Action! by Regular Wizard Co (a game about creating a TV series or blockbuster movie)
The Long Watch by StudioSquidink (an “uncanny solo RPG” that sees the player join a mysterious and underfunded organisation)
Heroes After Dark by Adam Krafter (where you play as Vespers – heroes who mysteriously trasform into monsters every night to fight evil with evil)
Murder of Crows by Michael Endo Weil (crows investigate the murder of other crows)
Hope Dies Last by Infinite Citadel & Mike Underwood (A triptych of Daggerheart-compatible campaign frames where defiant heroes fight against overwhelming odds)
Haunted by Jeremy Kerr (a tabletop RPG of supernatural noir investigation)
Trashumanism by Le Destroy (A biopunk TTRPG set in the Trashumanism Universe)
Twisted Lands by 9thPersona (players become Gidim – hunters, scholars, envoys, and problem-solvers navigating a living world of strange ecologies, ancient technology, powerful cities, and choices that leave lasting consequences)
Kraldum by tooth & shore (Go down to the shore below the city. Collect what you can. Survive what lurks there and beat the rising waters to make it home.)
Tales & Twists by by Jack of all Tracks (Dive into a menagerie of brand new worlds filled with whimsy, adventure and horror with new rules for resistance, dungeon crawling, and the tug of war between resilience and corruption)
GridShock by Paul Vermeren | VX2 (You are a new breed of heroes, fighting to restore hope to a warped world in the grip of villainy)
Myco//Drift by Crimson Adder (players take on the role of genetically altered pilots bonded to skyscraper-sized fungal bio-mechs known as Myco Suits)
Ivory Tower by RiftKid Games (Save your flying city, witness the end of the world, and rule the remaining rubble in this TTRPG about a scheming council of archmages)
The Wine Dark Sea by Abyssal Raven Games (Play as lost star farers trapped in a place of dreaded legend outside the known universe)
Heroes of a Thousand Tales by Adventure_Horizon (Every rule is designed to make you play, feel, and fight like you’re the hero of your own anime series)
Unbounded by Roger “Moishe” Main (Level up through the Ability Trees and learn to harness your Atzmah to create any character concept you can imagine)
Witches of Winter by Violet Blitz (A modern fantasy TTRPG about witchcraft, community, and climate collapse)
Everdoom by Tremor Pings (A shared-authority narrative game for four players who discover the destiny of a legendary hero by telling their fable together)
Winter Bones: An RPG for Doomed Mice by We Be Dangerous Publishing (Become mice. Tiny, fragile creatures battling for survival against the horrors born of the Deep Still. Monsters lurk beneath the frost. Do you have what it takes to evade their clutches?)
Road Warriors: A Stand Up Comedy Odyssey by DGB Games (Road Warriors is a game about playing fledgling stand up comedians on your first tour. The gigs are rough, the audiences are worse and your hit points are based in self esteem. Good Luck!)
What a great round-up of TTRPGs. Which one of the above titles sounds the most interesting to you? Have you playtested any of them? Let us know in the comments. I’m glad GameFound has made RPG Party an annual event. Good luck to all the games listed above. You guys rock!
Halloween: The Game Releases
On Halloween night, 1978, no one is safe from Michael Myers. Become the Boogeyman or fight back against the face of evil itself in Halloween.
Halloween: The Game releases just in time for Spooky Season. I see what you did there. The game has received solid reviews. That’s great to see. Games based on horror franchises can be hit or miss at times. Halloween: The Game can be played as a solo experience or with multiple players. Think a Michael Myers specific Dead by Deadlight, where one player is the killer and the rest attempt to survive their attacks. Halloween: The Game is available on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S/X.
That’s all the geek news we have for this week. Thank you for reading, and wherever you are, I hope you’re having a great day.
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