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Critical Role’s streamable RPG sessions have now spawned miniatures, while Mantic explore The Walking Dead’s best bad guy.
Harlem Unbound Creator Announces new Sci-Fi RPG
Harlem Unbound is an expansion for Call of Cthulhu and Gumshoe which took the racist depiction of minorities in Lovecraft’s work, turned it on it’s head and made something glorious and progressive. Last week we noted how the supplement is up for a Diana Jones award.
Now the man behind this, Chris Spivey, has announced he’s creating a new RPG for CoC makers Chaosium. It’s going to be an entirely new IP straight from Spivey’s head, although it will use the Chaosium’s BRP system. A further reveal will come at GenCon.
8Bit Box is a Time Machine
Iello’s 8bit Box is both board game and love letter to the past. It’s not one game but a collection of components which can be used to play a range of games, and that in itself reminds us of the anthology boxes of our youth. But as the name suggests, all these components are inspired by the 8bit video games of the early digital gaming scene, and the games you’ll be playing match.
So, the first reveal is Pixoid, but it’s basically a tabletop Pacman, which has you selecting moves in secret on cardboard controllers before revealing and moving. Other classical video ‘influenced’ games will also be in the box, including one for Olympic sports.
Critical Role is Kickstarting Figures
Although recordings of RPG sessions have been around for a fair few years, the success of Critical Role helped turn this into a huge gaming movement which ignited interest in RPGs once more.
Now the stars of both seasons of Critical Role can come to your tabletop, which is a cheesy way of saying miniatures have been created for all the player characters and they are being Kickstarted. It’s not going to be a long campaign, but you’ll get Vox Machina’s Keyleth, Grog, Percy, Pike, Scanlan, Vax, Vex and Trinket and as Kickstarter exclusives Tary and Doty, with Mighty Nein’s Beauregard, Caleb, Fjord, Jester, Nott, Mollymauk, Yasha and Shakäste, plus Pumat Prime and three Pumat ‘simulacrums’.
The figures have been put together by Steamforged, there’s one pledge level with no faffing around and the target hasn’t been smashed so much as obliterated.
Sébastien Dujardin returns after four years with Troyes
It’s been four years since Sébastien Dujardin released his last game (although see the second paragraph), but now the co-designer of Troyes is returning to the field with Sun Moon. This tasks you with moving airships between a north and south hemisphere of a planet, collecting and delivering resources. But the two halves of this planet are permanently in either light or darkness, and the world ‘rolls’. The victor is decided after sixteen rounds, and Sun Moon plans to launch at Essen.
Also in Dujardin’s world, Black Angel will (finally) come out in February 2019, while a Troyes 2 is being created: a roll and write two player game.
Here's Negan!
I’m part of a group that has the growing feeling the Walking Dead franchise would be better off handed to complex villain Negan by some retconning, but Mantic are getting in first. They’re releasing a spin off of their Walking Dead: All Out War miniatures game called Walking Dead: Here’s Negan.
Sadly it looks like he’s controlled by ‘AI’, but you play his commanders working co-operatively to secure their base, and against each other to gain the most of the boss’s favour. Negan can be called in to ‘help’. There’s twelve scenarios based on the comic, and this is skipping Kickstarter to appear in shops in time for Christmas.
A Dinosaur Park where No One Gets Eaten
There’s a lot of dinosaur park games around at the moment, which we assume is something to do with the small child in everyone and not Jurassic Park / World (of course it’s the latter). In most of those people get eaten, but Mesozooic is the park building game for pacifists. You get a hand of cards and have to place them together to form a functioning park, getting walls and roads to line up while keeping mechanics nearby. Think a city building game meets Carcassonne. We’re looking at a $20 price tag, but no release date yet.
The Binding of Isaac: Four Souls
The Binding of Isaac is Edmund McMillen’s brilliant digital game, and we’re not going to spoiler a moment of it. If you like games dark, powerful and emotive, give it a go. Or, stick to the tabletop because McMillen has produced a card game called The Binding of Isaac: Four Souls. He says he wasn’t convinced a tabletop game would do his digital vision justice, but the concept and bulk of the cards game to him over five days of illness, which is a bit crazy sounding and we love it. You play characters who have to work together to survive dungeons, gain treasure and find souls, but only the slayer of the final monster gets the treasure each time… The art style is divisive, but we like it and so do people who’ve smashed the funding target on Kickstarter. However, we’ve heard UK postage is high.
The Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game Limited Collector’s Edition
The LOTR: LCG (that’s much shorter to type) is now a digital game, so to help promotion the physical version is getting a special edition. The Limited Collector’s edition includes a starter set with all new artwork, a playmat, an MP3 soundtrack, new heroes and a replica One Ring. Like we needed to add replica to that. You can pre-order now and if you’re a completist you’ll pretty much have to.
Heroclix develops Marvel: Strike Teams
The phenomenally expensive Heroclix system is getting a new avenue in the form of Marvel: Strike Teams. You play familiar Marvel heroes (Captain America and Iron Man is in the base game) and you fight the classic villains with each having a Clix counter. There’s already an expansion pack with the explanatory title of Marvel Strike Teams: Avengers Initiative, but you will get to fight Loki with Black Widow. Play time is a longer one to two hours and release date is October 1st.
The Ninth World
Monte Cooks’s The Ninth World is set a billion years in the future, which we can only describe as optimistic. You play treasure hunters delving into the past (so maybe there’s some trace of our own world), and it’s billed as a ‘skillbuilding’ game with deckbuilding, bidding and developing technology trees. Intriguingly, you can play co-op, solo or against each other.
Cryptocurrency: the Game
Capital Gains Studio has a line in fun financial themed games, and the latest is Cryptocurrency. You have to buy and sell the titular pyramid scheme, sorry we mean modern monetary system, all while mining more. What’s of note is that CGS seem to be injecting a sense of reality into their games, and in Cryptocurrency you can lose vast amounts in a scam. See also real life. A Kickstarter is planned for the next three months, but there will be free promo copies of the game so eyes peeled.
Colt Express: Bandits
Colt Express is publishing six mini expansions under the heading Colt Express: Bandits. Each of these will include, and no points for guessing, a bandit who operates under AI and is competing against the players. You can work together to neutralise this joint threat (e.g. Ghost who wins instead of you if it ends the game with the suitcase) or fight among yourselves. It’s a Q3 release.