There’s a lot of great new releases coming out of big studios, including an absolutely massive Magic: The Gathering set in collaboration with Lord of the Rings, but I’m really excited for the indie games that are starting to get delivered as Zine Quest rewards. Here are more indie releases for you to check out!
New Releases: City of Winter, Curios, Outliers, Flux Form Fables
“In City of Winter, you will create members of a family and journey together through the strange world. You’ll play family members fleeing across the Riverlands scroll to the City of Winter—a magical metropolis. Elegant rules, evocative prompts, and inspiring images help guide your unique story. Family members will age and die, traditions will be passed from one generation to the next, and you will encounter new traditions that change your family over time. City of Winter captures the refugee and immigrant experience in a fantastical and magical setting.
“The game is played across two intricate and beautiful canvas maps: The River Scroll and the City Map. You’ll use the Tradition Cards and narrative prompts to create a rich and immersive story. One-shot or campaign play. No game master. Completely collaborative. A spiritual successor is the beloved Fall of Magic.”
“Curios: Albrecht Manor is an epistolary horror mystery experience. A haunting story told over a series of letters and ephemera.
Reality contains fractures, a series of anomalous events that defy explanation, with only remnants of their occurrences left behind. Letters, recordings, photos, and reports are all that remains of these phenomena, housed within the Archive, a catalogue of the extraordinary and peculiar. Our first collection is calamitous events connected through the centuries: The Case of Albrecht Manor.”
“Outliers is a single-player journaling game in which you play a research assistant trying to do their job in an absurd environment. Recruit participants, collect data, and perform miscellaneous tasks around the lab before the study runs out of funds. Keeping your job shouldn’t be hard when your participants are clones, time travelers, and cryptids… right?”
“Fluxform Fables is a quickly learnable tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) about shapeshifters sent to different worlds by their all-seeing patron Mr. Oxluff. Their divine mission: disrupt the course of history and sow enough chaos to please their enigmatic employer. To play the game, you need at least one random character creator, called FluxForm, a standard 52-card poker deck (or a 78-card tarot deck), one player to play as the narrator, and at least two players who will play as the shapeshifters.”
Crowdfunding: Upon Her Mycelial Throne, Insurgent, Aether Nexus, Monsters!
“Upon Her Mycelial Throne is a high-level fungal-horror adventure guide designed for use in Down We Go, but usable in any old school style fantasy game. The general plot works under the idea that your play group has at least 8-12 sessions under their belt before taking on Zaadha, Queen of Rot, an ancient figure from the history of Infinopolis. The adventure includes notes for how to seed the ideas from the book into the adventure ahead of it, and examples of fun adventures you might run in the lead up to Mycelial Throne.”
“Welcome to Insurgent, the action-packed tabletop RPG that puts you and your friends at the heart of a thrilling rebellion against tyranny! In this game, you’ll become a member of a group of rebels fighting against oppressive forces, with each mission potentially turning the tide in your favor. As you embark on daring adventures, you’ll create your own unique setting, deciding whether to battle in a fantastical realm, a modern city, or futuristic landscapes.”
“Aether Nexus is a fantasy TTRPG of mecha and magic powered by The Mecha Hack. Discover a high fantasy world shattered by calamity and preserved by aetheric knights clad in artifact armor. Inspired by such properties as Escaflowne, Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind, and Aura Battler Dunbine, Aether Nexus features a full ruleset, unique player options for customizing aetheric knights and their Apparatus, and a host of Game Master tools to help build harrowing adventures across an exciting fantasy setting.”
“Monsters! is a collection of 20+ foes for Mörk Borg. All the art is created by the one and only Waclaw Traier, using dark magic and traditional paint. The physical reward will be a 48-pages A5 magazine.”
In Other News
- Meghan Cross and Siren Song Games have released Powered by Sentinel, a new system reference document for the solo game Sentinel.
- GoChess is currently crowdfunding a chess board that allows a player to play against an AI that automatically moves the chess pieces on the board.
- Modiphius Entertainment has released Winter of Atom, the first quest book for Fallout: The Role Playing Game; it’s available for pre-order now.
- Steamforged will crowdfund its next four games on Kickstarter. Monster Hunter World Iceborne: The Board Game is available to back on Kickstarter.
- Last Night Games released two new games: Horticulture and Galaxy Rush.
- Free League Publishing is publishing two new expansions for the D&D 5E edition of The One Ring roleplaying game: Ruins of Eriador and Tales From Eriador.
- Prismatic Wasteland published a great writeup about how Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and TTRPGs deal with realism.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
