Arkosa is live
Arkosa is a 1-4 player resource and hand management game in which you are trying to build the most successful settlement on an alien planet. It is live on Kickstarter and the campaign will run for 20 days. You may pledge for a copy of the game.
Arkosa is played over 3 rounds, and each round is split into 6 phases. At the start of a round (omitted in the first round), you do the Preparation phase, that is, prepare the game board for the subsequent round by refreshing the pool of tokens, and drawing new bribes, colonists and rooms. Then, players take two actions each. They may Put a Colonist to Work, Make a Trade, Build a Room, or Make a Bribe.
To Put a Colonist to Work, you play a Colonist from your hand and have them produce one of the resources indicated on their card. When they are finished, you place them either on the 'resting' space, or flip them to their injured side in case they need to heal. If a Colonist carries a backpack, you may send them to explore, which allows you to either gain resources or recruit new Colonists. To Make a Trade, you can do any of the exchanges shown at the bottom of the game board (e.g. trade 1 nitrogen or 1 food for 1 scrap).
To Build a Room, you select and build one of the rooms available on the production line by paying the required resources. When you build a new room, you immediately gain the resource of the space that the room tile occupies. You may also gain extra bonuses if the room type matches the type required by the space it takes up. To Make a Bribe (only applicable in the second and third round), you take one of the available bribe cards. Once a player has taken 2 actions, they must check to see if their population exceeds 6 Colonists, in which case they must exile the extras and pay the associated penalty.
In the Rations phase, you pay 1 nitrogen and 1 food for every two Colonists in your bunker. You lose morale in case you cannot fully feed them. In the Morale phase, you gain or lose Morale points depending on your position on the Morale track. In the Room Production phase, your powered rooms will produce resources. Finally, in the Rest Colonists phase, you take your resting Colonists back in your hand. Injured ones have to stay put until they are healed (either by using a special room, or a healer Colonist). At the end of the third round, the game ends and you proceed to scoring.
In the solo mode, there are two bots that you can choose your opponent from, one easier to beat than the other, and each of them comes with 5 levels of difficulty.
Looks as if it could be fun, and I like the looks of it (as usual). The KS page says nearly 8.6 million starting combinations. That should be enough. 🙂