It's an exciting time to be a board gamer in New Zealand, we have two upcoming Kickstarters that arent far from delivery.
First up we have Manifest from Schilmil Games a charming pick up and deliver shipping game set in the 20s. I had a chance to play an early playtest version of this one at Board Games by the Bay and while I wasn't blown away I certainly thought it was a solid game with a lot of potential and good art.
The Kickstarter campaign for this one seemed a bit lethargic at first. If I have to criticize Schilmil games for anything its getting their name out there. Things weren't looking too great at first but I was happy to see that with some strategic publicity and advertising on Boardgamegeek pushed it through with about 120% funding. I am looking forward to seeing how it all turns out.
As things currently stand we should be seeing deliveries of Manifest in the next few months.
Next up we have Shipwrights of the North Sea by Shem Phillips of Garphill Games . Shem ran a masterful campaign here, combining good value, fantastic theme and great art work. I suspect that art and theme really sucked in a lot of backers and I don't blame them. The Kickstarter finished at 920% of the $8000 goal.
Shem is one of the New Zealands up and coming designers and I keep an eye out for anything he does. He has certainly grown since his first game Linwood was released in 2009. I enjoyed the abstract art style of Linwood but game play tended to be a bit random, being essentially a "Roll and Move" game where you built your own board. We ended up house-ruling the roll and move aspect to "roll two pick one" to even out chance.
Plethora was the next release from Shem that I have played and his growth as a game designer is clearly evident. Plethora features fantastic art and many more meaningful decisions than Linwood. I backed Plethora on Pledgeme (New Zealands local crowdfunding site) and certainly have no regrets, but I did get the impression it wasn't as polished of a game as it could have been. I wouldn't play Plethora with more than three people due to the downtime and I feel like the "draw x cards choose y" aspects could have been streamlined a bit more.
Shipwrights of the North Sea looks fantastic but you can never really tell how good a game is until you play it. If trends continue I think we are set for something good. I only hope that Shem gave this one an extra bit of polish.
Looking at recent Kickstarter updates Shipwrights should be in the hands of backers within the next two months.
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