Designed by Jack Caesar and Alessio Cavatore, Krowdfunder is a light, set collection card game with a novelty twist. Players are each dealt a project card that sets out the project’s funding target. Through drawing and discarding, players are each trying to collect the five different card types they need to launch their crowdfunding campaign. They will also be adding an audience card, but those available are face down on the table, so players have to memorise the position of the most valuable audience cards.
The first player to announce their project launch gets first pick of the facedown audience cards. Other players then take an audience card and players lay out their cards making use of just one of each type (colour). Players each calculate the amount raised by adding up the number of coin icons and multiplying that by the number of happy backer icons. If they have to make use of any cards showing disgruntled former backers then these grumpy face icons are deducted from the number of happy backers.
Krowdfunder isn’t just a race to be the first to collect a set of five different coloured cards. Even if you have the different cards needed to launch, there’s no point doing so unless you have the total (happy backers times coins) to meet your project’s funding target. It’s possible too that a player that doesn’t manage to attain a set of five different cards may still have sufficient from the cards they do have (including the audience card they pick up) to meet the funding for their project. The game continues through further rounds until a player collects 40 coins worth of funded projects.
As an alternative to drawing and discarding a card, a player can choose to play an ‘update’ card. This will shake the game up in some way. For example, there are upgrade cards that allow a player to demand another player gives you a card of a specified type provided they have it in their hand. Another upgrade card demands that the facedown audience cards are shuffled, with the player who played the update card permitted to peek at just one of them.
Optional rules allow players a degree of choice over the projects and therefore the funding targets they set for themselves. At Board's Eye View we wouldn’t recommend playing any other way: it’s a very much better game if, instrad of getting a randomly dealt card, you can decide for yourself whether to go for a project with a low funding target which you will be more certain of attaining or to take the risk of adopting a project with a high target that may be less likely to succeed but which will get you closer to an overall win if it does come off.
Krowdfunder is published by River Horse. Illustrator Chris Caesar has done a cracking job with the humorous artwork on the cards. It’s fully in keeping with this light, fun filler-length 2–4 player family game. And, as you’d expect, Krowdfunder has come now to a crowdfunding site. We’ve greatly enjoyed our plays of the preview prototype and we fully expect the finished version of the game to further evolve so that it reflects its own crowdfunding experience and the input of backers. Click here to view the KS campaign and to really get in on the Krowdfunder experience.