See how there’s no “Kickstarter” in the title this time? That’s right, one of the 3 games previewed today is going to launch on Gamefound, which was previously used only as Awaken Realms’s pledge manager. There’s also a pretty good looking remake of sorts and one game from a debuting designer. Enjoy!
ISS Vanguard – Fall 2020
ISS Vanguard was one hell of a mystery for many board game fans since its first teasers. All we knew was that it’s an adventure game set in space with an extremely vast world and little focus on combat. Recently Awaken Realms has finally shown some pictures and gameplay descriptions on their own service called Gamefound. So far it looks quite different from what most people expected. And in a good way.
In ISS Vanguard a team of cooperating players become the pioneers of faraway space exploration. There will be a lot of story goodness here. If you’ve already played Tainted Grail: Krzysztof Piskorski is fantastic at building atmosphere and describing bizarre locations. And planets visited here will certainly be bizarre: from frozen wastes to eerie rocky areas overflowing with mysterious energy.
Players will be able to choose which planets to visit, pick technologies to work on, decide what aliens to learn about, build an effective crew rooster and much, much more. Each of you will lead a different section present on the spaceship (Engineering, Recon, Science and Security).
ISS Vanguard is full of unique, physical components rarely seen in board games. You keep your available crewmen and other stuff in a binder with its own printed sleeves containing additional information. The binder is called “The Ship Book” and is also vital for saving your game. When you finally pick a mission, a separate binder will serve as a board for your adventures. The planets you’ll visit are still partially randomized so good planning before landing is a must. Exploring the ground will make heavy use of dice placement and dice manipulation mechanics. In short: count us in.
Nova Aetas: Renaissance – October 20th
The newest installment in the Nova Aetas franchise is almost here! Renaissance is based on the original game from 2016 but expands on its ideas and changes some of the concepts by many degrees.
The game is designed for 1 to 4 players who become mercenaries during the all out war between Venice and Italy. You work together and each hero gets stronger after acquiring new weapons, equipment, classes and valuable skills. The world keeps mixing detailed historical characters with legends and fantasy.
Nova Aetas: Renaissance takes a lot from strategy video games like Final Fantasy Tactics. You and other players fight the AI-controlled enemy forces with your own abilities, magic and smart use of terrain.
Mission Catastrophe – November 17th
Let’s finish with something completely new from Matt Walters – a designer who’s a long time boardgame fan, releasing his first project and publishing it with the help of Cardboard Alchemy.
Mission Catastrophe, a 2-6 player game, takes place in a spaceship. A certain asteroid was supposed to be a stage for a mining mission but something went wrong and now the fiery rock is heading towards you. The time is limited and the only thing left to do is to find a way to escape your doom. Oh, and your ship is completely broken.
Each player takes on a role of a single crew member cooperating to successfully run away from the deadly situation you’ve found yourself in. Players have different abilities, so using them together with fellow crewmen is key to saving everyone’s lives. Who knows, if you do well enough – it might be possible to fix the ship and run away.
