Board Game Friday: Lookin' Back at Kickstarted Things (Volume 3)

Welcome to the third installment of my Lookin' Back at Kickstarted Things.  If you missed either Volume 1 (here) or Volume 2 (here), I'd invite you to check each of those out prior to today's post.  

I'm working my way through the various Kickstarters that I've back in chronological order from oldest to most recent.  Volumes 1 and 2 contain the first six projects that I backed, now we up to projects 7, 8, and 9.

We'll start with the first game that I specifically bought with my son in mind.  Now, I will grant that at the time of backing this my son wasn't quite yet born but I had a feeling he'd be a board game lover all the same.  

Yep, I went with Fireball Island:  The Curse of Vul-Kar as the first game I bought for my son.  Interestingly enough, my son is now five and I still haven't played this one with him!  The game requires some reading on the cards so that's sort of a deal breaker at the moment.  I will say that I do expect to get this one to the table with my son before the end of the summer.  

Finally, I should add that I have played my copy of the game already (I played it a few times when the game finally shipped).  It's perfectly fine and I do think my son will enjoy it a lot when the time comes.  The main gimmick of the game is a big volcano in the center of the board into which you drop marbles in an effort to knock down your competitors.  It's stilly fun!  Overall, I give this purchase a 7/10 as I think the game will be great for my son but I definitely bought into the game wayyyyy to early (and I imagine that I could get a copy of this game now for less than what I paid way back when).

Next up, a game that I have actually played with my son already:

That's 5-Minute Dungeon:  Big Box edition.  This is a game that plays in five minutes (as the name suggests).  Basically, it's a real-time game where you quickly try to match symbols to defeat bad guys and make your way through a dungeon and then beat a boss at the end.  It's super easy to teach - my son was playing this at four years old (though I did take out the few cards with words on them from his deck).  

If I'm being honest, I was hoping for a bit more "meat" on the bones of this particular game.  I still own it but I've recently put it up for trade over on boardgamegeek (a board game website).  I don't think I can go much higher than a 4/10 on this one simply because the game itself didn't end up being all that appealing to me.

Finally, let's end today's post with a game that was decidedly for me and not my son!

That's Belfort (along with a couple of expansions).  I've only played Belfort once thus far (and I haven't even opened up the expansions) but my one play was a positive experience.  This game along with its expansions also still resides in my collection and it's definitely a game that I need to get back to the table sometime soon as I don't remember much about it anymore.  That said, I'll still give this one a 8/10 as I think the base game is quite good and there are some expansions to make it even better (hopefully, I guess I'll find out eventually).  

That does it for the next trio of projects that I backed.  My track record on my early projects that I backed was kind of all over the place (I like to think that I got more selective the longer I collected board games).  Still a fair number of other Kickstarters to show off in future posts so stay tuned for that down the road.  Until then, may you all get a game to the table (and let me know what you played lately)!