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As the focus of the gaming world turns to Essen, there’s still some news this week involving Evil Dead 2, the Ragnar Brother’s last project and Digging.
The Evil Dead 2 Kickstarter Debacle leads to… another Kickstarter
Look, if you’re one of the 6000 people who pledged for Space Goat’s Evil Dead 2 game, this news story isn’t going to cheer you up even though the people involved want it to. What’s happened is that a company called Jasco (who worked on a Buffy game), are going to produce an Evil Dead 2 board game that draws on the original elements of the Space Goat one, and this would be taken to Kickstarter where, for every one sold in a successful campaign, a second copy would be donated to a Space Goat backer.
This is, of course, no comfort to anyone whatsoever, but some people might, just might, get some sort of Evil Dead 2 game in the future whereas, a few weeks ago, they faced having lost their investment. This is all different from the Evil Dead 2 miniatures coming from the team tasked with building the new board game. No dates yet.
Acram coming back to Steam
Acram Digital’s port of Istanbul is incredible, but it’s not on Steam as the developer was banned for cheating the reviews system (not an accusation, they confessed). The good news is that Acram’s PC portfolio is returning to Steam and in the future Istanbul will join it.
The Great City of Rome
The design team of Dunstan and Gilbert set Elysium in Ancient Greece and Pyramids in… well you can guess, so no points for predicting they’d come to ancient Rome.
‘The Great City of Rome’ is being published by Z-Man Games, and tasks you with pleasing the emperor while building the great capital at his command: obtain blueprints, gather resources, construct. But action selection is tricky, requiring you to move closer to the emperor for the best blueprints, and further away for the materials. It’ll be out next year.
The Nippon Range
Honshu is a couple of years old now and saw you building Japanese towns by placing cards, but it’s just become the first in a range of games christened the Nippon line. Next up is Hokkaido, a reworking of Honshu which adds card drafting to the town building and which takes two to five players about forty minutes. Release date is February 2019 and a very reasonable $25 cost.
Ragnar Brothers to retire after the Romans
The Ragnar Brothers, who worked on some great games including Backpacks and Blisters, are going to end their career after one more game. It’s called The Romans and covers the entire period of Ancient Rome. You start with four senators, can gain more or turn them into Generals, and we’re promised more than simply a conquest game, lots of routes to victory, and a catch-up mechanic if you’re a long way behind. It’s coming to Kickstarter this month.
Big Dig is Reverse Tetris?
Tasty Minstrel’s Big Dig is a new ‘write on the board’ game which sounds like Tetris in reverse:
“Each turn in Big Dig, you draft a card from the center that shows you the shape in which you must dig (by crossing out squares on your personal dry-erase board). You must touch either the top of the digging area or a previously dug area, and you can't go through certain areas (though you may forgo regular digs to blow up stones that are in your way). When the cards in the center run out, everyone returns their cards to the center and flips them over so that different digging shapes are now available.”
We’re not sure we’re ready.