Ploop! Mwoooaargh! Sploooosh! So goes the great Lord Ekkonox as he heaves his bulk from the waters to scare the willies out of anyone nearby. That’s what the picture above tells me anyway – isn’t it beautiful? This and a string of other ridiculously gorgeous art describes the land of Soulfall in the latest game from pint-sized publishing company Small Box, which is now up on Kickstarter.
Punted as a mechanically-light but strategy-rich affair, Soulfall sees between two and four players take the reins of a tribe of nomads expanding into a deserted world, which has apparently been rescued from obliteration by a set of godlike entities called Lords. Players try to gain the favour of these mysterious beings as they expand their fledgling tribes over the course of a 30 to 45-minute game. It’s got area control, card drawing and looks like it offers several ways to win by focusing on population, outpost construction or collecting strange items called shards. Here’s what’s hiding in the box:
Publisher Small Box, which is run by game designer John Clowkus, previously put out well-received two player card game Omen: Reign of War in 2011, following it up with kingdom building card game Stone & Relic, sci-fi deckbuilder The Valkyrie Incident and three-in-one ancient Egypt-themed card game box The Nile Ran Red. The art on the last two especially is worthy of praise, but artist Sandro Rybak has really gone the extra mile with Soulfall. Look!
It’s good to see such a beautiful game on Kickstarter with such a modest target – Small Box is aiming for $8,500 in the next 10 days, and was already just shy of the $2,500 dollar mark as I mashed this into my keyboard. I’ve dropped John Clowkus a line to try and bag a print and play copy for review, but at this rate it’ll be fully-funded before we get the chance to give it a whirl. You can view the current provisional rules here, and moon over some more stunning artwork from Sandro Rybak in his portfolio.
It was super hard to write this article without accidentally typing Seafall, FYI.
UPDATE: There’s now a video to wrap your eyes around:
