Welcome to the first Crowdfunding Carnival of the year! No way around it, it’s a slow January, like many that have come before. Indie designers are often holding their cards until ZineQuest (formally announced in December), and major publishers are focused on closing out the year, which often means entering the new year with no projects on the slate (lest there be liabilities with no revenue recognition). As such, coming out of the New Year’s holiday there is often a small slate of projects, if any worth reading at all.

But fear not! This month’s update will be short but sweet, with three projects that are certainly worth looking at. While there are no major publisher campaigns active at the moment, there are two small format games tackling ambitious topics: Civilization building and mashing up time travel and giant robots. Then, we have a large-format labor of love which, though it follows in the footsteps of those before it, is still worth some consideration.

Welcome to the Crowdfunding Carnival for November! We’re heading into the end of the year, and for multiple reasons it’s a great time to put the real world to the side and check out some games! November was a pretty big month; nearly 20 campaigns passed my deck and needed to be narrowed down to make this article. So though I say it every month, it’s certainly true this month: While every campaign I cover here is solid and interesting, many of the ones I didn’t have space for are too. We’ve also seen another big month for Backerkit, with a bumper crop of intriguing games making the upstart crowdfunding platform an equally (if not perhaps more) intriguing place to look for new games as Kickstarter.

We’re ready to start, though! We’re going to cover a few major campaigns by some of the big guys, though we really only have one (maybe two) standalone games to talk about. Then, we have a good number of indies. Cross-collabs, solo games and tarot mechanics await you below.