Green Couch Games goes beyond the known world with Board With Life’s Chris Bryan and legendary illustrator Vincent Dutrait in the upcoming game Darwinauts!

Congratulations! After decades of hard work, scientists have opened a portal to another dimension filled with alien life. You are one of the few brave enough to venture into this exciting but dangerous new land to research and record new species. The world watches to see the discoveries that will be uncovered. The media has dubbed you and your comrades “the Darwinauts” for daring to go beyond to record the new origins of species. You must work quickly to bring back records of the most exotic lifeforms to secure your place in history, but be careful, the portal is unstable and won’t remain open for long...The Rift is coming!

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Darwinauts, designed by Chris Bryan (co-creator of the Board With Life web series, and designer of Favelas and Dragon Ball Z: Perfect Cell), is a light-to-medium weight Euro-style game of tile-laying, worker placement, set collection, and action selection.

During the course of the game, a player takes 2 actions on their turn, selecting from 5 possible actions; place an explorer, place a tile, replenish tiles and remove explorers, discover a species, and record a species. Whenever recording a species, a player immediately takes one of 5 possible bonus actions that allow the player to set themselves up for future turns or alter the landscape. Players continue to take turns until The Rift Tile is revealed, making the portal to the new world unstable. Once The Rift begins, players add an additional phase to their turns, taking part in dismantling the landscape they have opened up for exploration. The game comes to a close as they race to complete their tasks and return home. When the game ends, players receive prestige points for their recorded species and bonuses are earned for specializing in specific sets of species. The Darwinaut with the most points will win the game and go down in history as a pioneer in this new age of discovery.

Darwinauts is a game for 2-4 players, ages 13 and up and plays in 45 minutes.The visual world of Darwinauts was brought to life by legendary artist, Vincent Dutrait (Elysium, Lewis and Clark, New York: 1901, Rise of Augustus) who painstakingly crafted the various species by hand using the medium of oil pastels. Graphic design assistance is provided by Darryl T. Jones (Into the Black Forest, Dobbers: Quest for the Key).

The game is set for a Kickstarter campaign launching in Spring of 2019, aiming for a Fall 2019 release.

Darwinauts is being published by Green Couch Games. Green Couch Games was founded by Jason Kotarski to release great little games that make great big connections. Darwinauts will be Green Couch Games’ 13th release and second project in their larger format box.

Green Couch Games goes Into The Black Forest with a German-style, cards-with-numbers game from Jason Slingerland!

Filled with magic and mystery, Germany’s Black Forest is a place of legend serving as the backdrop for the classic tales we’ve all come to adore. Darkness and danger lurk around every corner but those who dare to enter the forest and face challenging encounters with creativity and cunning will come out on the other side enriched for having taken the journey...Into The Black Forest!

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The game takes places over 2-3 rounds (depending on the number of players) with each round consisting of 3 “encounters” or hands. In the game, each player uses their own deck of cards numbered 1-12 depicting 4 creatures that will help them journey through the forest; frogs (#1-3), squirrels (#4-6), lynx (#7-9), and owls (#10-12). In addition to the creatures on the cards, each deck has a unique distribution of 4 suits of magical items; wands, potions, spell books, and swords.

At the beginning of each round, players will draw 6 cards from their personal deck and reveal 3 cards from the Encounter deck in center of the play area. The Encounter cards will direct the play of each hand and provide a glimpse of what challenges lie ahead for future encounters. Players will take turns playing a card to an open slot around the outside of the Encounter cards with each side scoring in a different way once the Encounter card is surrounded. At the bottom, the low card will beat the high card, taking the value of the high card for points. To the left side, the card played will score it’s value only if it’s suit matches one of the cards played above. On the top, the high card beats the low card, taking the value of the low card for points. And on the right side of the card, players may each play one card face down, hoping to meet the unique win condition for the card or to bluff or sluff to throw off the other adventurer and buy themselves extra time. After playing three hands, new Encounters are revealed and players choose from their remaining cards and new newly drawn cards to prepare for the next round.

Into the Black Forest is a new classic card game that provides a challenging puzzle of hand management, planning, and tactical decisions. Fans of trick-taking, area control, and light bluffing will love taking a journey Into The Black Forest!

Into The Black Forest is a game for 2 to 4 players, ages 8 and up. Jason Slingerland (designer of Unreal Estate and co-host of The Building The Game Podcast) designed the game while Darryl T. Jones (designer and artist of Dobbers: Quest For the Key) served as illustrator and graphic designer.  The game plays in 30-45 minutes.

The game is set for a Kickstarter campaign launching on September 12, 2018 with plans for a Q1 2019 release. 

Learn more at BoardGameGeek!

Green Couch Games springs ahead with the ultimate “Filler” card game!

You are a pastry chef in charge of putting delicious fillings in a variety of cakes, pastries, and baked goods. By coming to work early and making use of your full pantry of supplies, you will earn money, customer reviews, and critical acclaim. With a little luck, you might win out over your rivals and be crowned Star Baker!

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Filler combines many of the ingredients that have made Green Couch Games a treat to bring to the table. Easy-to-learn rules mixed with a quick playtime and playful appearance makes Filler a great game for families of casual gamers or connoisseurs looking to pass the time waiting for more guests to arrive.

In the game, players will use multi-use cards and a blend of simultaneous action selection, time and resource management, set-collection, and hand-building to collect ingredients needed to fill tasty pastries on their way to becoming the Star Baker. Starting with a hand of 3 cards with various start times and basic ingredients, players will choose a card to reveal along with other players to determine the turn order. The earliest player to show up for work goes first and so on around the table. Using cards from their hands (Pantry), players may use ingredients they have acquired to Fill recipes from a central row of available cards (Recipe Book) or Restock The Pantry by picking up all of their previously played cards. Each recipe filled will provide new start times and ingredients to use in future rounds and may earn points that are represented by money, customer reviews, or critical acclaim at the end of the game. The availability of bonus points and cards containing special actions help to direct players’ choices in the kitchen, add depth of play, and provide variety and replayability.

This card game crams a lot of sweet delight into its 72-card package. With illustration and graphic design by Claire Donaldson (Best Treehouse Ever: Forest of Fun, Go Nuts For Donuts, Food Truck Champion), Filler will  leave players with a mouth-watering desire to play this delicious game again and again.

Filler is a game for 2 to 6 players, ages 8 and up and is designed by Jonathan Chaffer of GRUBS (Grand Rapids Unpublished Boardgame Society). This game follows Chaffer’s first game, Stroop, from Grand Gamers Guild. The game plays in 20-30 minutes.

The game is set for a Kickstarter campaign launching on April 11th, 2018 with plans for a Q3 2018 release.

Green Couch Grows a Sequel with Best Treehouse Ever: Forest of Fun!

It’s time to build another treehouse!

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In the new stand alone sequel to the Golden Geek Nominated Best Treehouse Ever (Best Card Game, Best Family Game, 2015), Best Treehouse Ever: Forest of Fun, players compete to build their best treehouse, outfitting their treehouse with cool rooms, and creating fun habitats for their favorite furry and feathered friends, while also making sure that their tree doesn't tip over and that their rooms are more impressive than all of their friends' rooms at the end of the game.

In addition, our treehouse builders have leveled up their experience by visiting new locations in the forest that provide special abilities to help them in their new build.

Building takes place over three weeks/rounds, and in each round, players use card drafting and spatial reasoning to add five new rooms to their treehouse. Players must pay attention to the other treehouses being built since they take turns determining which types of rooms score for everyone at the end of each round.

At the end of the third week, the winner is the player with the best treehouse ever!

But the best part? Best Treehouse Ever: Forest of Fun can be combined with Best Treehouse Ever to play up to 8 players!

 

Best Treehouse Ever: Forest of Fun will be the first “Big Box” game from Green Couch Games allowing owners of the original Best Treehouse Ever to store it all in one convenient box. The game includes 60 Room Cards with all art, 12 Animal Cards, 4 Starting Tree Cards, 6 Scoring Cards, 10 Location Cards, 4 Scoring Tokens, a folding Score Board, and 4 Balance Markers. The game will feature more great art from Claire Donaldson and Andy Jewett building on the foundation created by Adam McIver with Best Treehouse Ever.

 

Best Treehouse Ever: Forest of Fun is a game for 2 to 4 players (or up to 8 when combined with Best Treehouse Ever), ages 10 and up and is designed by Scott Almes. The game is set for a Kickstarter campaign in Fall of 2017 with a Q2 2018 release.

Green Couch Goes to Space...Before The Earth Explodes

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Resources are dwindling. Overpopulation is destroying the planet. Time is running out. Elite factions are exploring the cosmos for a new home, new technology, new allies, or the resources needed to repair the plight of their damaged homeworld. With nothing left to lose and on the brink of madness, these warring Earthlings, equipped with deep-space warships with expansive cargo holds, will do whatever it takes to claim the glory for saving humanity...Before The Earth Explodes!

 

Before The Earth Explodes is a game that uses clever tactics and intuition to be the first player to advance to the top of the technology track, colonize 7 new planets, destroy the opposing faction, or meet a variable victory condition based on an encounter with an ally ship. In the game, players choose actions simultaneously to determine their course of play. Using a Rock-Paper-Scissors-style of action resolution, a scout will attack an invading ship while an invading ship will damage an away party or a mining vessel while a mining vessel will defend itself against a scout. If a player is able to avoid taking damage they will get to carry out special actions based on the card played. These actions allow players to increase their technology level, encounter an ally ship, clone an opponent's ability, take control of a new planet, or mine for resources.

 

Before the Earth Explodes is 2-player space epic in a small package and each games takes 20-30 minutes to play. The game was created by the prolific design team and members of Game Artisans of Canada, Daryl Andrews and Adrian Adamescu (Sagrada, Mine All Mines, and the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Showdown).

 

The game will include 46 cards, 30 resource markers, and 4 player tokens. Art and graphic design is being provided by Davy Wagnarok whose love for retro sci-fi is helping to bring the game to life for the game table.

 

Before the Earth Explodes will launch on Kickstarter in August of 2017 with plans for a Q1 2018 release.

Ladder 29 is live on Kickstarter!

Ladder 29 is a hot game of ladder climbing firefighters extinguishing their hands of cards. Check out the campaign today.

 

Taking a cue from beloved family card games like Tichu, Clubs, and Haggis, Ladder 29 adds a new challenge to the familiar climbing/trick-taking genre. As experts in the time-honored business of firefighting, players attempt to extinguish their hand of cards while facing difficult challenges that hinder their abilities and choices. Players must decide when to play it safe and when to put it all on the line in this easy-to-learn game that is sure to turn up the heat around the gaming table!


Ladder 29 is played over several rounds in which players are dealt 13 cards each, pass 3 cards to the player on the left, and in reverse scoring order select a Hot Spot Card. The Hot Spot Card details the number of points awarded depending on the position the player goes out and a challenge that applies only to that player for the round. A player may choose to only lead singles, end runs in even numbers, or even limit the types of suites played in sets. The bigger risk taken will provide a bigger reward as the first player to extinguish their hand by playing all thirteen cards wins the round and earns highest points possible on their Hot Spot Card. Play continues until all players, except the player who goes out last,  earn points for their finishing position.

 

Ladder 29 is a game for 2 to 5 players, ages 10 and up and is designed by the seasoned duo of Ben Pinchback and Matt Riddle (Fleet, Eggs and Empires, Floating Market, and the upcoming Wasteland Express Delivery Service with co-designer Jonathan Gilmour). Each games lasts 30 to 45 minutes.

Back it today on Kickstarter!

Green Couch Games needs help rounding up some shady characters from the wild west with their upcoming release; OutLawed!

Overwhelmed by the stress of the hooligan hootenanny that’s overrunning the bustling town of Bandit Bluff, the resident deputy has up and left his post! Sheriff Croc Holliday is shuffling and hustling to find his next deputy. Looking to fill the vacancy, Croc has decided to put a pool of new recruits to work helping clean up some of Bandit Bluff’s most wanted outlaws and will choose the most dedicated to be the new deputy! A little lying, some stealthy scheming, and the sense to know a good time to tell the truth might just help give a leg up over the rest of the herd. Who will out-law the other applicants to become the new deputy?

OutLawed! is a social game of bluffing, truth-telling, and out-thinking your opponents. Each player has an identical set of 11 outlaw cards imagined as animals escaped from the zoo somewhere in the wild, wild west. Over a series of rounds, players take turns playing a card face down and making a claim about which character card they played. Players are free to tell the truth about the character played or to make a bold faced lie! After players have played cards and made their claims, all the characters are revealed and each player assesses whether or not they have met their Outlaw’s “apprehend if” condition. Players who were successful add their Outlaws to their jail pile while all other players place the card back in their hand. Lionel Manesworth can only be captured if you tell the truth. The Vixen Twins get nabbed when others are convinced to play the same card during the round. Lawman Croc Holliday will catch anybody who isn’t on the up and up. Once a player fills up their jail, everyone compares their total reward value of apprehended cards to see who has has earned the most rewards and gets to fill the vacant position as deputy of Bandit Bluff.

The game is made up 54 cards including 4 sets of 11 outlaws cards, reference cards, and a start player Deputy Badge. Illustration was provided by Shaz Yong who also contributed to JurassAttack!, Super P.L.E.X., and Star Wars young adult novels. Graphic Design is being provided by Ryan Cowler and Andy Jewett.

OutLawed! is a game for 2 to 4 players, ages 10 and up and is designed by Ryan Cowler whose credits include JurassAttack! (Green Couch Games), Super P.L.E.X. (Button Shy Games) and development assistance on Perplext’s Pack O Games(™) series by Chris Handy. Ryan is also a professional wrestler in Oakland, California

The game is set for a Kickstarter campaign launching on September 14th, 2016 with plans for a Q1 2017 release.