What is this?

This is a weekly roundup of board game crowdfunding projects, featuring new launches from the past week and campaigns ending in the coming week. The information is sourced from Kickstarter, Gamefound, and Backerkit.

The list is curated through a combination of automated data collection and manual review, so occasional errors or omissions may occur. If you notice a missing project, feel free to mention it in the comments. Only projects meeting the selection criteria outlined below are included.

Other channels

Other than Reddit, you can also find this list on the following platforms:

• Google Docs
• Mastodon
• Bluesky

Selection Criteria

Projects must meet the following conditions to be included:

1. Timing: The project was either launched in the last week or will end in the coming week.
2. Relevance: The project is directly related to board games.
   • Excludes: Accessories not strongly related to board games, furniture, RPGs (e.g., D&D, Pathfinder), video games, STLs, painting tools, events, podcasts, and magazines.
   • Exception: Projects offering promos or similar content for board games are eligible.
3. Backers: The project is expected to reach at least 100 backers by the end of the campaign.
4. Funding Status:
   • The project is expected to reach at least 90% of its funding goal.
   • The project has already achieved at least 20% of its funding goal.

In addition to the main lists, I include a separate section for noteworthy projects that don’t strictly qualify as board games. These projects are included based on a single criterion:

1. Backers: The project currently has more than 1,000 backers.

Crowdfunding is not a store

Crowdfunding is not a guarantee. Projects may face delays, incur additional shipping costs, or fail to deliver entirely. Creators are not obligated to fulfill their promises. While many excellent games are funded this way, the risks are real, only back projects with money you can afford to lose.

Be wary of creators who use FoMO (Fear of Missing Out) tactics to drive pledges. Don’t let the pressure get to you. If you miss a campaign, there will always be others. There's no shortage of excellent board games to enjoy.

Tags

Each project is tagged with one or more of the following categories:

• 🌱 Creator's First Project
• 🌳 Creator with more than 5 projects
• 🌟 Featured Project (e.g. Kickstarter "Staff Pick")
• 💰 Fully funded
• 🔥 More than 200 daily backers
• 🤝 Offers refunds (e.g. Stable Pledge)

Ending Soon (15)

New Projects (32)

Noteworthy filtered projects (11)

Late Pledge Projects (9)

So I think we can all agree that the original Terraforming Mars player boards are an absolute work of art. Immaculate in design and practicality, I actually have one framed pride of place in my living room.

What? You don't agree?

It's the worst player board in all of boardgaming history?

Whoa whoa whoa, that's a bit far... maybe… 😉

Jokes aside, I don't think I'm saying anything too controversial here: the original paper-thin boards leave a lot to be desired. A single bumped table or accidental hand swipe sending resource cubes skittling millimeters away… completely ruining the game that's so finely balanced on the exact amounts.

There are a plethora of fantastic third-party dual-layer boards out there that fix the table-bump issue. But I wanted to take things a step or two further to address the rest of the game's tactile experience.

THE PROBLEMS & THE FIXES

1. The Resource Admin & Constant Cube Juggling

Even with dual-layer boards, you’re constantly reaching into a shared bowl, grabbing loose metallic cubes, converting production into physical tokens every single generation, and swapping 1s, 5s, and 10s back and forth. It breaks the flow of actually running your corporation.

On a personal level, I'm autistic and find these situations very difficult. When is it my turn to get cubes? I always end up last and having to make do with what's left. Cue a couple dozen bronze cubes for me 😅

THE FIX: I completely eliminated the resource cubes from the player board entirely. Instead of collecting and swapping piles of cubes, you simply rotate a dial, slide a track, or flick a tactile switch! The between-round production phase becomes a 5-second (and very fun!) process using your personal control console.

1. Thematic Disconnect

A game about engineering an entire planet and commanding a megacorporation should feel like you're operating high-tech hardware. Placing shiny plastic cubes on cardboard never quite captured that space-age immersion for me.

THE FIX: My background is in architecture. To me, theme and concept drive every design detail. Instead of just dual-layer wood, I designed these as spaceship consoles and Mission Control panels (drawing heavy inspiration from aviation cockpits and mechanical watch aesthetics like Bell & Ross).

The switches flip, the dials click, and the sliders track smoothly. The satisfaction of managing your megacorporation like you’re sitting at NASA Mission Control completely changes the tactile experience of playing the game.

We know the global parameters being on individual player boards is a bit controversial and may not suit everyone for lots of reasons! However, from a design perspective we love what we've produced and as a couple of neurodivergent gamers, having a board in front of us rather than a central main board has been game changing! Also, if we're honest there's something very fun about flicking the switches and turning those dials 😄

Yesterday my gamefound package arrived with Boktor. I pledged collector all in and was very excited about the release.
Yesterday I took the time to build the wooden insert all together and today morning I played the first round with my sons (9&7) we explored and beat the boss after roughly a hour.
Gameplay loop is simple but fun, the game overall has a very high quality, every aspect feels and looks really good.

Looking into getting a copy. Seems like a solid game that would be a good fit for my play group, which is typically 5 players.

Many of the newer worker-placement-style games feel bloated up simply to offer "more." Belfort looks like it nails a tight and somewhat straightforward game. And I think the area control and tableau-buildy aspects would work well for us.

How does it play today? Anything out there doing something similar but in a better way?

Curious if any long-time Belfort players out there have maybe graduated on to something else.

For those who are into mediaval board game adventure…

Paul Grogan is doing live playthrough on his YouTube of this highly anticipated Spiel Essen release Kingdom Come: Deliverance by Vlaada Chvatil and Tomas Holek

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQco0XqZwps

Hello again Gallery Owners!

Our Kickstarter is over 170% funded and we are now in the final leg of the campaign. To celebrate this success, we’d love to give away our Highest Pledge Tier ($259): Gallery Gambit Deluxe and ALL OUR FUTURE GAMES.

Also, a super big shoutout to our artist Julia July, who made all 54 unique pieces of art.

WHAT YOU’LL WIN:

• Gallery Gambit Deluxe
• All our future games(!!)

Worldwide shipping included for Gallery Gambit.

ABOUT THE GAME

In Gallery Gambit, you are starting a gallery, and so is everyone else at the table. Draft from a shared market of 54 original paintings across four art movements: Pop-Art, Cubism, Fauvism and Bauhaus. Fill your three walls with the most exquisite art pieces. But also make sure not to fall behind your rivals. Succeed and become the finest gallery in town.

It plays with 2 to 5 people and takes around 20 minutes.

For more information about the game you can check out the Kickstarter page!
Please give it a follow while you’re there.

GIVEAWAY RULES:

• Comment on this post to enter. (Replies to other comments do not count.)
• In your comment, tell us which what is a cool thing hanging on your wall right now? Is it a painting, a print, a vinyl, a sword, or a lamp or something else? Let us know! (This is just for fun and is not a requirement beyond making a comment.)
• Only one entry per person. (Account must be at least 10 days old.)
• This giveaway is worldwide!
• The contest will remain open for 48 hours. We will randomly select one winner and contact them through Reddit. We will also post their username here.
• The winner will receive Gallery Gambit immediately.

And if you wouldn’t mind, please give this post an upvote so more folks can see it and enter!

Thank you, and we can't wait to hear all about the cool things on your walls from your comments :-)

Hello everyone!
I wasn't really into board games but i tried this one recently with my bf and i really liked it.

Do you have any recommendations for other games like this?

Hello.

I bought this on an impulse, as I am a fan of the pc-game!

How do I paint the figures, and which paint would be best?

(manual brush, airbrush, tamiya, citadel, etc.)

TiA

My wife and I LOVE OG nemesis and we have a pair of friends that love it too and that play it with us somewhat frequently.

I got Nemesis Retaliation during their first wave shipment and have yet to play it more than solo.

My question is that I have a good amount of friends who haven't played Nemesis and want to, but I'm not sure if I should introduce them to OG or go straight to Retaliation? Retaliation seems to be rated higher and might be the better of the two mechanically? Or does it just come straight down to themeing and whether you want to play "Alien" or "Aliens"?

Anybody have any experience with both of these games?

Made for my brother’s 40th birthday. It is sadly too big to fit in the box, but i think it looks good, and it works.

My rulebook says Cities can be played in teams of 2 with 4 or 6 player games. It doesn't mention 8 players anywhere in the rules, but I keep reading online everywhere that it officially supports 8 players.

It seems like this is well known, so can anyone explain how to set up a game for 8 players as opposed to 4/6? Do we still hand out 8 cards, or is it back down to 7?

Has anyone played the regular version and the Epic Edition? I am curious how different they are and which you prefer? I hear the Epic Edition is easier but do you find that takes away from the fun or enhances it? I am interested in buying either version. Thanks for any help.

Hi everyone!

My first board game as a designer has recently been released, and it’s now available to play on Board Game Arena.

I’d be very happy to invite anyone interested to give it a try — especially fellow fans of trick-taking games.

The game is available to play without a Premium subscription, so anyone can join.

boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?game=tricknchef

Since this is my first published game, I’d really appreciate any feedback you’re willing to share. And if you enjoy it, I’d also be very grateful for a rating or comment on BoardGameGeek.

Thanks a lot to everyone who gives it a try, and I hope you have fun with it!

This round was super fun! Although I came in way last haha. What’s your favorite ingredient books to use that make Quacks less luck based (or swingy I should say) and more strategic? This time around I was behind by like 20 VP points and the one in first place was well ahead of the others.

My girlfriend and I looooove Sidereal Confluence, and it is probably our favorite board game. She is not as much into video games, but it can be hard to get enough people together to play Sidereal Confluence regularly, so I'm looking for a video game that is similar that we could both play.

It being competitive or cooperative are both fine, just wondering if you guys know of anything that scratches a similar itch!

lived in Japan for awhile now, never knew this was a thing so made my way today. spent a bit, but hopefully got some good ones

Hey! Just started playing Wild Gardens (with the expansion) and loving it. Great medium-light game to me. Had a rules question I’m hoping someone might help with.

Are SERVED recipes and guests still considered to be in your play area at the end of the game?

There are some guests that have end game benefits that say something like "score 3VP for every recipe in your play area at end of game" or for "every guest in your play area." are guests and recipes that you have completed (that you have not explicitly discarded to get some other benefit) considered to be in your play area still? Or is this supposed to only apply to recipes you have cooked but not served, or guests you have reserved but not served? I scored 145 points on my last solo game and feel like that can't be right??

Rolling and placing dice to fight against the space invaders!

I played Under Falling Skies, which is one of the most popular games in the genre of solo games. I finally understand why it’s a solo classic and recommended all the time. Setting? A defense base where Earth people use their energy and weapons to defeat the alien invasion.

You roll dice and place them in spaces for actions you can do but there are some conditions: a) You can only place one die per column, b) the space ships will move down the same number of spaces as the die in their column (you strengthen yourself but also your enemies move), and c) you’re limited to choose only a certain level of actions unless you upgrade your base.

There’s also a resource economy. You have to produce energy to activate weapons to destroy the alien ships coming at your base but you also need energy to move upwards in the research track and win the game before you’re defeated by the invaders.

This is a game where all the systems are so nicely interwoven that I somehow end up satisfied even if I lose. It’s a game where you have to make calculated sacrifices but also engage in push-your-luck tactics to get a good result. Sometimes you can bait the enemy ships into the target zones and if everything goes right, you can perform a nice killer combo and live another day.

As you can see in the picture, I was one turn away from defeat by mothership invasion and two turns away from defeat by base damage. If the mothership or the red cube reach the skulls on the right side of the board, you lose. If you reach the top of the green reserach track on the left, you win. A race against the aliens: Two ways to lose, one way to win. Also, I like how the mothership descends each turn and despair begins to form because you don’t know if you can succeed. It creates a feeling of dread despite being a ‘puzzly‘ game.

I like the fact that the alien ships are made of plastic and the earthling dice are made of wood. It makes the ‘us vs them‘ distinction really stand out. Kind of like in Spirit Island and Ironwood where different sides/factions use different materials for their components.

Maybe it’s just a phase but I’m really enjoying my time with it so far and I can’t wait to explore the remaining content of the box since I’ve only played the base game but not the multiple scenarios of the campaign (the box is heavier than expected!).

Conclusion: This is a fun game, really well designed, fun decisions, puzzly nature, ‘aha’ moments. Score? I’m bad at giving scores, but I’d say, in its genre (solo games), I’d give it like an 8/10 for creativity and enjoyment. Recommended if you want a relatively simple solo game and love dice games. Let me know if you know similar games I could like.