Watch your Back: Week August 14 to 20
Hiking, cyberpunk adventures, and decorating your flower shop: all these and more on crowdfunding platforms this coming week. Let's check them out one by one, starting with some vase decor:
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The Little Flower Shop Duel is a 1-2 player Bring Your Own Pencil game in which you are trying to make the best flower arrangements for your shop window. It is based off of Dr. Finn's card drafting game by the same name, and the cost will be 5 dollars, as it's just a set of paper sheets that you print out yourself.
In each round, players choose a shelf in the warehouse, and mark the items off in their flower shop with the purpose of collecting flowers to match vases. Solo rules haven't been revealed yet. It is launching on Kickstarter on August 15.
Personal opinion: I smell either an automated opponent or a BYOS here, so I won't be joining in the decorations.
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Moving on to Trailblazers: a 1-8 player route-building puzzle game in which you are creating a continuous trail for hiking, kayaking and cycling in the mountains. In the solo mode, you have to collect 50 points in 4 rounds by connecting cards and adding up the landmarks. It is launching on Kickstarter on August 16.
Personal opinion: This looks like a nice, relaxing puzzle. I'll consider it when it goes live.
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And last, we have Nanolith: a 1-4 player cooperative cyberpunk dungeon crawler in which a group of heroes are trying to retrieve their lost memories.
This is a storybook game so, with every encounter, you will have to consult the accompanying booklet to progress the narrative. Gameplay is dice-driven with some ways to mitigate the luck. It is launching on Kickstarter on August 15.
Personal opinion: This may be of interest to cyberpunk fans. I'm not so much into the theme though, and storybooks give me the yawns.
I'm really looking forward to Trailblazers. It was one I was disappointed I missed at Origins last June. I tried a bit of the unofficial official solo mode for Curious Cargo and enjoyed it. And watching Rahdo's final thoughts also really has me excited. Not sure that I'll back it but I'll definitely look for it come retail.
Trailblazers reminds me of Tsuro and Indigo. 🙂
Image Source: BGG
Image Source: BGG
P.S. This is my 2000th Comment/Post. 😊 Too bad I'm so annoying! 😄
Talk about mixed feelings. While I like the theme of all the games presented, I'm particularly drawn to none of them.
The Little Flower Shop DUEL well it's a duel... I'm sure it's best at 2 and I think it would have AI solo, since duel games tend to do that. BYOS doesn't make much sense for duel games.
Trailblazers is lovely in terms of puzzliness and theme, but I really dislike the graphic design. Maybe it's the colours. I may look into it, but I suspect a pass.
Nanolith... what to say... I really love the cyberpunk theme... I dislike standees, even more so acrylic standees (same problems, just more expensive)... not a big fan of story books... and…
I don't like the graphic design on Trailblazers but the theme is appealing. If I saw it in a retail store I would at least pick it up and take a closer look.
Nanolith is the only one of these to interest me and since I've spent far too much recently it's going to have to be monumentally good to convince me to back it! We've had a multitude of Cyberpunk offerings recently and whilst I've been interested and looked at all of them, none have convinced me so far!
Will this be the one??? 🤔