Lookin' Back at Kickstarted Things: Volume 1

Loyal readers probably know by now that in addition to collecting baseball cards, I'm also a collector of board games of all types and sizes.  There are a number of places where I can get board games but for today I thought it'd be fun to start to go through some of the games (and, occasionally other things) that I've bought off of Kickstarter.

Before I get to my purchases, a quick word about Kickstarter for those who may not know much about the site.  Essentially, Kickstarter is a site that is designed to get ideas funded and, hopefully, turned into finished projects.  People can "back" projects on Kickstarter by paying some amount of money and then at some future date if all goes well those "backers" will get their promised reward.  Of course, there's a lot that can go wrong in the entire thing and it's definitely a bit of a gamble in that projects can (and do) fail leaving backers out in the cold with nothing.  Also, it can often take a long time between when you pay for a project and when you actually get it, even if the project goes smoothly from start to finish.

While all that definitely sounds scary, the benefits for backing on Kickstarter often include special additional items, promotional materials, or, in some cases, Kickstarter exclusive items or projects entirely!  

Flashing back to the point in time where I first discovered Kickstarter - way back in 2015 or 2016 - I actually discovered the site thanks to a preview I read regarding wireless lights for LEGO sets.  

There was a Kickstarter running at the time so I joined the site and backed the project since it looked like a neat concept.  Unfortunately, this first project ended up being my first Kickstarter failure as the project never delivered and I ended up being out a bit of money.  The one saving grace for me is that I didn't back this for much cash but still, it was a bad start to the site!  That being said, it wouldn't be for a couple of years until I realized that this first project was a failure...and by then I had had a number of successful Kickstarters actually deliver so I wasn't as soured on the site as I probably would have been otherwise!  Looking back, I tend to think the person who started that particular Kickstarter project may have been a bit of a scam artist and I probably got lucky that I wasn't taken for more money.  In terms of a score for this particular Kickstarter project, it's unfortunately a 0/10.

With that bit of sourness out of the way, let's keep going chronologically with other projects that I backed over time...and I promise there will be a lot more successes moving forward!

The next project I chose to back was Dwar7s Winter.

This game was my very first Kickstarter board game and it was a resounding success.  For one, I enjoy the game itself but I was also blown away by the quality of the components and the variety of Kickstarter bonuses that were included in the project.  I still have my copy of Dwar7s Winter though I haven't played it in quite some time.  In fact, simply writing about the game for this post has made me want to get my copy of the game back out for another spin!  With the power of hindsight, I still consider this to be a successful project for me, probably about an 8/10 as a score!

Hot off the success of Dwar7s Winter, I then backed a much, much smaller game called Postcard Dungeon.

Postcard Dungeon was a solo game that was basically printed on an oversized postcard.  The game was super cheap ($6 pledge) but if I'm being honest when the game arrived it didn't exactly get me fired up to attempt to play the thing (in part because you had to first source your own parts including different colored dice).  

To this day, I've yet to do a full playthrough of the game though I do still have it tucked away on my shelf in it's original envelope.  As you can see, there was definitely a bit of a learning curve for me when it came to Kickstarter and figuring out what I should (and should not) back!  No fault of the owner of this particular project as it was delivered as promised and in a reasonable time frame but I still can't give this one more than a 3/10 as it was a fairly bad decision on my part to back a game that was in a style that I don't much care for!  Again, definitely more of a "me" problem here as opposed to a project creator problem.

So there you have it, my first three Kickstarter projects that I backed.  One no-show, one game that I never bothered to try, and one resounding success.  When (if?) I do my next iteration of this particular blog series, I can promise more successful Kickstarter projects including a game that I played as recently as yesterday!!