You have ideas, and now is the time to bring them to life. Through the medium of crowdfunding! Can you attract the right audience, and the money you need? Or will you languish amongst so many other crowdfunding hopefuls?
Krowdfunder is a 2-4 player game about running a crowdfunding campaign. Publisher River Horse has made a print-and-play available on their website, so I decided to give the game a look.
The game is played in rounds, and revolves around three decks of cards; Audience, Project and Campaign. Each player receives a random Project card, which contains a money amount. The Audience cards are dealt face up to the centre of the play area, and after all players have had a chance to have a look, are turned face down.
Then each player receives six Campaign cards. Campaign cards fall into six types, with five coloured cards which allow for projects to be launched, and a sixth black type which provides effects. Players take turns drawing a Campaign card from either the deck or discard pile, adding it to their hand, and then discarding a card.
Once a player has one of each colour they can choose to shout “Launch!”, at which point all players scramble to grab one of the Audience cards in the centre. After this players resolve their campaigns. They do this by selecting one of each colour in their hand and revealing them, along with their Audience card.
The total number of Happy Backer icons are totalled, Ex-Backer icons are subtracted. The same is done for all coin amounts, and then the two values are multiplied together. If this meets the minimum amount on the Project card the player may keep the card. Once one player amasses 40 coins worth of Project cards they win.
Krowdfunder seems to be a fairly simple set collection style game, but with some interesting twists. The face up dealing, and subsequent flipping, of the Audience cards feels like a neat inclusion. It adds a pleasant dexterity element to the game, and seems like a way to emulate the frantic feeling many crowdfunders speak of experiencing when running a campaign.
A lot of the cards seem suitably, puntastically, tongue-in-cheek. With some friendly jabs (Zombiecider) as well as some almost literal translations of real campaigns (Potato Salad). Paired with the cartoonish, almost innocent, art style it gives Krowdfunder a light and humorous feel.
The process of quickly grabbing the Audience cards may put some players off. Helpfully, this has been considered, and alternate Audience card distribution rules have been included. A good idea, given some people play tabletop games precisely because they usually don’t require speed or dexterity.
There are a couple of things I take issue with. Each card only really has one important gameplay part, the Happy Backer and Ex-Backer icons as well as the coin values. At the moment, on the print-and-play version, these elements seem a little small. Not so small that they are illegible, but given their importance and the lack of any other required elements, they could stand to be a bit more prominent.
I’m also not a fan of each player receiving a single random Project card each round. At other times players have a choice in what card they are taking, but the one randomly provided Project card seems unduly harsh. Imagine getting the higher value Projects for multiple rounds in a row, and not being able to fulfil them. Unlikely, but not impossible. Even dealing each player two Project cards and having them choose one seems like a more forgiving approach. Hopefully issues like this will be addressed before Krowdfunder’s release, if not the crowdfunding campaign for it.
Overall though Krowdfuner looks like a light and fun game which should be easy to teach and run. It doesn’t appear to look or play like any of River Horse Games other releases, so it will be interesting to see what kind of an audience it attracts.
Krowdfunder is set to go live on Kickstarter sometime in April. Head over to the River Horse Games website to keep up-to-date with the latest news on the game.
