Crowdfunding Spotlight - Hero's Crossing

There are countless games out there where you can experience the trials and tribulations of being an adventurer, but at the end of the day someone needs to supply those brave wanderers with all of the various weapons and potions that they need to slay the Dragon King or whatever world-threatening evil has sprung up this week. In Hero's Crossing, you take on the role of an entire town that sets out to be the best at providing adventurers with the equipment they need to win the day.

A game of Hero's Crossing begins with players drafting their initial starting tiles for their town. Once they've got that all sorted out, each player constructs their town from their pool of drafted building tiles along with some land tiles in-between to fill the gaps. Someone is selected to be the first player and the game gets underway.

Hero's Crossing uses a dice drafting system. Each player has four dice (one red, one blue, one white, and one green) and each die can only be used for specific actions. For example, producing potions at an Apothecary can only be done with the green die and moving armor from an Armor Smith to an Armor Shop can only be done with a white die. The available list of actions is decided by an Action Card which is drawn at the beginning of every turn and actions are taken in pairs. A player might be able to produce a resource and then immediately move it using one die, or they may be able to bid on a new building for their town and expel an enemy spy.

As the game progresses, players will create resources, move them to shops, expand their town, and try to attract heroes to join their cause. Each acquired hero has some kind of power that they will add to your overall abilities. (Heroes are also worth a certain number of victory points depending on how powerful they are.) When the final Level 3 hero card is revealed, two more rounds of play remain before the game concludes. The player with the most victory points at the end of the game wins!

There's a few pledge levels for this particular campaign. A $5 pledge will get you the Kickstarter-exclusive Gamer card. If you're keen on picking up a copy of the game in a retail environment for some reason (or you missed the card when it was given away at an event), the $5 Gamer Card tier will sort you out. A $20 pledge will get you your choice of an Arch Mage or Beast Master promotional print. The Gamer Card and art prints can also be added on to any other Pledge tier if you'd like to snap up some combination of these along with a copy of the game.

Early adopters can secure a copy of Hero's Crossing for $40 but there's only a limited number of these available. This tier and all of the ones from here onwards will also receive all stretch goals at the conclusion of the campaign.. Once the Early Adopter tier is sold out, your only option to get the game is the $50 The Game pledge. The $90 The Game x2 pledge gets you two copies of the game.

The last four pledge tiers are for the big spenders and are all limited to a fixed number of backers - once they're gone, they're gone. At $200, you'll get a limited run plushie of either the Defender or Alchemist hero along with a copy of the game. If you're keen on putting in a bit of your own design input, the $400 8-bit Hero tier, $600 16-Bit Champion tier, and $800 32-Bit Legend tiers will get you a copy of the game, all stretch goals, and the ability to design your own hero to be put into the release version of the game.

As for shipping, it's relatively straightforward. Shipping to the United States is free. Canada costs $15, the EU costs $19, and everywhere else in the world costs $30.

The campaign has a few stretch goals ready and raring to go. Hitting $24,000 will add a Summoner hero card to every copy of the game and $28,000 will add a Gunslinger hero card to every copy. At $33,000, a competitive strategy game called Hero's Crossing: Tactics that makes use of the game's cards will be developed and the rules will be released as a free PDF to everyone; this essentially gives you two games in one. $39,000 unlocks the Lumberjack Hero card. $46,000 upgrades the quality of all the cards in the game, and $54,000 adds in the Witch hero card. That's it for the shown stretch goals, although more will be added as the campaign hits previous goals.

This is the first Kickstarter campaign being run by Brian Sowers of One Method Monkey, The game's design is finished; it's just a matter of successfully meeting the campaign's goal of $21,000 and then getting to work on manufacturing and shipping. Manufacturing will be handled by Panda and shipping will be handled by Ship Naked.

If Hero's Crossing sounds like the kind of game you and your tabletop group might enjoy, head on over to the game's Kickstarter campaign which just got underway. You can learn more about the game by checking out our recent preview. and if you'd like to learn more about the game you can head on over to its official website.

What do you think of Hero's Crossing? Does the idea of playing shopkeep to nigh-suicidal fantasy heroes appeal to you? Let us know in the comments below!