Interesting Kickstarters (Week of 6/4/2018)

The Kickstarter wheel keeps on turning, so I'm here this week with more projects to talk about! And of course, there are many more interesting-looking games to come. 

1. Villagers

I have been hearing a lot of buzz about this one. It's a card drafting game in which you draft new residents for your village, all of whom have special talents that hopefully fit well together. You also need to balance your food supply and building capacity. It's a game of maximizing your resources and building the most profitable village possible. The art is simple but distinctive, and the game has a solo-specific mode: Players must manage to profit despite the interventions of an angry and temperamental countess, who forces players to work around events that add challenge to the game. If that sounds like your sort of thing, this project may be worth a look. 

---

2. New Corp Order

In New Corp Order, you are the CEO of a major company who is trying to manipulate media outlets to generate good press about yourself. It brands itself a euro-style hand management game. It is also learnable in five minutes, which means players should be able to pick up the game and quickly get around to actually playing it. You can only take one of three actions per turn: Acquire a share of a media conglomerate, lay down conglomerate cards to actually infiltrate one, or use your power within an infiltrated conglomerate to take over various media outlets. However, choosing the right action at the right time could present a challenge. 

---

3. Fantastic Factories

Fantastic Factories is an engine-building dice placement game for 1–5 players. Your goal is to manufacture as many goods as possible, as quickly as possible. You can achieve that by building factories that work together in various interesting combinations. Figuring out how the factories can work together is a major part of the fun. To staff your factories, you place workers (dice). Each factory has a different worker requirement, but you can use "training facilities" to manipulate your dice and get the values you need. You can also hire contractors to help you achieve your in-game goals. Most excitingly (for me, anyway), the solo mode is played against an opponent called "The Machine," which means it will be more than a beat-your-own-score gaming experience. This one looks like a lot of fun, and I chose to back it myself. 

---