3 Upcoming Kickstarter Board Games – Pirates and Nordic Sagas

Time to show you some great upcoming board games that will soon launch on Kickstarter. We have some big name creators today and titles we’ve been hyped about for a long time. 

HEL: The Last Saga – May 12th

Hel: The Last Saga is likely the biggest and most ambitious game that the team at Mythic Games has been working on so far. This gargantuan adventure game consists of 13 Songs, which work as the campaign’s chapters, and each of them is made of a bunch of scenarios. The action is set on a mystery and danger filled island somewhere in a Norse mythology inspired world. The gameplay takes place on few different stages: from leading small teams through dungeons to resource management and discovering the map of the previously mentioned eerie isle.

HEL: The Last Saga seems to go further than most big scale campaign based adventure games. You don’t focus on a single character. Instead: you follow many of them through their own, often personal, storylines. All of them develop and grow over all the Songs. 

As with many legacy type games, HEL: The Last Saga has all of its chapters packed into boxes, which unveil the secrets of its complex story when you keep progressing. Each box might have some new info, story bits, cards or even new heroes for you to play as.The game also has a book containing the entire storyline, including over 900 paragraphs for you and your team to go through and read as you keep going. There’s also quite a lot decisions for you to make so the story can progress in a plethora of ways. Nonlinearity is one of the greatest things here. Even the order you unlock heroes or trigger big plot points may vary from between two campaigns played by two groups of players.

So far, HEL: The Last Saga looks like the next big thing and we’ve been hyped for it for quite some time. The campaign launches on May 12th and we’re planning one more article about the game next week.

HEL: The Last Saga online

Sea Rovers – June 16th

If you, like us, admire projects made with heart and passion, you simply can’t miss this one. SeaRovers was (and still is) a 20 years long journey for its author: Van Overbay. He had his initial concepts back in 2000 and the game kept evolving, despite many obstacles. Wherever shown – it was warmly received and excited plenty of people.

SeaRovers tackles the theme of 17-18th century pirates but does everything it can to make itself realistic. No tentacled krakens for you! Instead, there’s an insane amount of historical facts, visuals inspired by classic paintings depicting pirates and quite a complex gameplay system (although you can also play a simpler version too). One of our favourite features is how the game makes players use the direction in which the wind blows to plan their journeys between ports and various historically important locations.

SeaRovers was designed for 1-4 players and is of course a competitive game. Cards make for the vital mechanic and components here. Pieces of eight work as the main currency and allow using certain actions and paying for cards. Each players owns his or her own ship (up to 3) and a more or less faithful crew. To win you have to do your best and amass as many VPs as possible. You get them for booty gained by completing historic Attacks represented by the so-called Attack Cards.

Notify me on launch

Mercado de Lisboa – Q2/Q3 2020

The newest title by Vital Lacerda is going to hit Kickstarter sometime near the middle of 2020. Mercado de Lisboa is all about making money. The game was designed for 2 to 4 players and takes place in the titular city. Everyone buys booths on a huge, local marketplace and does their best to make a fortune operating these. 

The marketplace is a 5 x 5 grid and like you probably expect: the placement is vital here. Apart from the booths you have to take care of other objects like cafes and restaurants which all influence your business. Specific booths work better near specific places related to them thematically (booth selling veggies will earn more when located near a restaurant etc).
The creators claim that, despite being quite thinky, Mercado de Lisboa won’t take ages to complete and will have a rather filler-like pace.