Oh dang. I guess I’m backing this. It reminds me so much of the PopCap game Chuzzle that my partner absolutely adores (she has a Steam account exclusively so that she could play Chuzzle, before it went incompatible with MacOS). Gameplay isn’t Chuzzle-like… but we’ll get some use out of a fuzzy Jenga.
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Was really curious what the things are made of. Will they lose their stick.
You could accomplish something similar with a number of different fibers. Felt would work. They’re probably those little polyester balls that are sold for kids craft projects, though.
In that case, to lose their stick they’d need to get too pulled at and dirty to have exposed fibers than hook onto each other. Not sure how long that takes, but it’s not like an adhesive that would just wear out and pick up every tiny bit of dust and junk on your table.
You could replicate this with a big plastic cup and a few dollars worth of craft supplies.
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That was the other side of what I was thinking (these are pretty standard balls you can buy in a craft shop). It may be why it is slightly vague on what the balls are.
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I was quite surprised to see Fuzzies. It does seem quite a bargain basement conceit with nothing to justify it’s presence as a professionally produced project (or the need for attributing 3 designers?!). I guess I shouldn’t expect anything more from a company that built itself on re-releasing the name in a hat game, but after Wavelength, I did expect more. This is a big disappointment.
There needs to at least be some kind of inventive “but then…” addition that subverts expectations. ‘Jenga, but with balls’ isn’t it.
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It felt like a way for them to sell Monikers and Wavelength and circumvent the rules of kickstarter.
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Jesus yes, that’s been a while.
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Apparently they posted an update today saying “Yes, but soon”… sooooo… probably not soon.
Still not my longest KS wait by a long shot, but that’s not really a title that should be fought over (I think it was the Infinity RPG right now? Which technically still hasn’t shipped everything from the KS, but that’s being pedantic… I think other than that, “Girls of Games”, a book about women in game design, was staggeringly late… so basically I shouldn’t KS books… oh, and the WarMachine video game, which was tragically awful. Very, very late to the point that I think they gave up on delivering a “finished” product and just claimed it was “done enough”, extremely poor design, and it had heart but just not good).
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Ken’s still at it on multiple TMG campaigns. He’s started a poll on BGG now. He’s invoking numerous rights and laws. No way TMG will recover from this truth to power.
This should be absolutely my thing thematically, but it feels like it could literally just be the numbers with no art. Total separation of theme and abstract mechanics.
Has anyone played the original Spirits of the Forest?
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Yep. Im a big fan of Schacht. Yes. The game is very abstract. You collect colours and you score if you dominate a colour.
Not his best, imo. I prefer Coloretto and that is smaller and cheap. But I backed this one anyway.
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I have and it was a cute two player experience a few years ago at SPIEL. I remember the material was very nice and looked quite beautiful. Let me look up my notes from SPIEL: rated 7/10, here’s what I noted down:
Playing with 2 was relaxing and the strategy not very complicated. With four people blocking tiles it can probably get quite crowded on the board and the competition to get tiles from every color more fierce. While it looks pretty and plays fast for us the two player doesn’t have enough depth and the four player is likely too chaotic.
My tastes have changed a bit since then. At the time all I wanted was heavy strategy games. What I didn’t realize was that nobody could play those games all the time. I’d say Spirits of the Forest is a relaxing filler type game for two. I don’t quite remember the rules. For myself, I put a reminder on the KS… just because it looks sooo pretty and I am hoping the expansion might give it more depth.
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The game is more zero-sum at 2 players.
To explain the rules to everyone: the scoring in the game is area-majority. If I have 3 reds and Yashima has 5. I score nothing and Yashima gets 5 points. If you’ve played Piepmatz before, you will be familiar. If you have nothing from a colour, you score -2 for having nothing.
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It looked simple and light on the playthrough, but I almost don’t care because the art is SO GORGEOUS.
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So, I’m following Mercado de Lisboa because it sounds like a good entry point to Lacerda. I’ve just seen on BGG that a ‘limited amount’ of the other EGG Lacerda titles are going to be available in the pledge manager. KS isn’t live until early September, but I may be tempted by Vinhos or Lisboa (having never played a VL game)
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They’re quite different from other heavy Euros, so if you get a chance to try one before committing I’d recommend it. Some people fall in love with them, others find them over-fiddly.
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Of the ones I’ve played and are done by EGG I’d recommend The Gallerist most as an entry point, personally. I found Vinhos a little weak comparatively and Lisboa is great but kind of brain-melting and while O’Toole’s art is always lovely, Lisboa’s aesthetic is much more…monotone? than the others. It’s possible Escape Plan might be a better entry point still but I have no direct experience with it.
I ended up backing Perseverance: Castaway Chronicles, the currently funding Mindclash project which ends in…like a day ish, despite initial misgivings. I’ve been watching Heavy Cardboard play episode 1 and gosh it looks good.
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I’m in for $1 on Perseverance to ensure I get the campaign price. I really need to watch a playthrough, but everything I’ve heard sounds great. Plus I expect the production to be off the charts, which never hurts!
I caved. I backed the Tokyo Metro expansion. I really like the game, so a tighter faster variant shouldn’t be a bad thing to have. Hopefully.
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I’ll be honest, I’m following the campaign for one reason; those KS exclusive coins are 
Not a bad price either, except for shipping to anywhere not the US…