“The Agents“, a card game I previewed for game designer Saar Shai about a year ago, boasted one of the most successful Kickstarter campaign I had ever seen. That campaign raised over a quarter of a million dollars, if you can believe it. This kind of success is certainly a strong testament to what a great game and a strong fan base can accomplish. “King Down”, the latest creation by Saar, is now alive and kicking on Kickstarter. It’s a bit like “Chess”, making it easy to jump into if you know what you’re doing. With that said, it introduces some new rules and mechanics that make it a completely different game. You can read my full preview here: King Down Preview.
Game Designer Saar Shai offered the following information on “King Down”:
King Down is a strategy board game that borrows many elements from chess, adding to them or modifying them. One of the reasons for this is that I wanted anyone with a chess set to be able to play it (by adding some cards, printed or bought separately). Another is that I’ve always been drawn to the majesty of chess but never really enjoyed playing it. So King Down can also be thought of as “fan fiction”, where I designed a game from a well-known one, giving it my personal twist. That said, after much research and feedback, and especially because I don’t enjoy actual chess, I tried to stray away from its original form and not be bound to many of its features. In that sense, King Down is a new game, not a variation.
The “base-set” of the game is going to include a customized board, cards and miniatures (both re-designed original chess pieces and new characters that join the team). It’s also going to support 2-4 players. However, the prototype consists of just the cards which anyone can play with their own chess set, but only 2 players.
Minimum age should be 8 – anyone that can handle the original chess and can read the cards. Average play time is somewhere between 40 and 60 minutes.
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You can learn more about and support “King Down” by visiting its Kickstarter page, here: