About
Forest Fire!
$4,366
57
Our fundraising goal is to bootstrap our enterprise by building 100 copies of our first game. Our pipeline has 4 games ready to go and two others in final play-testing. With success building and selling our first game, each game will give us enough resources to build the next one that we have designed and tested.
Our first game is a board game, Forest Fire! We have played this game with friends and family for over a year. We are thrilled with how the game has been visually brought to life by Leith Walton.
This is the game board image provided in the $25 pledge game.
NOTE: Because of the excellent support, I have contracted with Leith Walton for a much more attractive board, a new original watercolor, with custom-printed river pieces. I will show them if I get the art before the campaign ends. It will be much more beautiful. The images below are the full board at low resolution and a small section of the board (about 0.15 of the total board area) at higher resolution to give you an idea of what the board will look like. It is a full forest scene that will cover the entire 20x20in board, a real work of art by Leith Walton. A hex pattern will be overlaid for the game, of course.
Players use several different fire fighting approaches - from shovels and water to helicopters and chemical extinguishers, similar to real-world fighting of forest fires.
NOTE: The die-cast helicopter, shovels, and bulldozers are for Kickstarter pledges only, will NOT be available with the standard game after kickstarter. Only printed tokens (as above) will ship with the retail game.
As the game progresses, environmental factors like wind and drought increase the frequency, intensity, and spreading of fires, simulating the effects of climate change.
For more on our goals and other games, visit our website.
Art and visual design are by Leith Walton. Here is a short bio:
Leith Walton’s Illustrations are mostly gentle whimsical fantasy inspired pieces that speak of a post-apocalyptic future but with a romantic’s twist. Working in both traditional watercolour and digital mediums, Walton conjures up images that delight the mind and tell tantalising stories of mystical mythical creatures and other wondrous delights.
Parts and Rules Overview
Goals
The primary goal is to save as many houses (10 points each) and schools (20 points each) as possible
A secondary goal is to save as much forest as possible (400 - dead space; dead space is fire + rock + burnt acres)
Game ends
The game ends when the card pile is exhausted (team wins) or the acres of fire exceeds 40 (team loses).
Pieces and Parts
- 1 board of 20mm hexagons (referred to as ‘acres’), a 20x20 grid
- 20 houses
- 2 schools
- 42 hex water printed wood tokens
- 40 red crystals (for fires)
- 30 black disks (for burnt acres)
- 30 yellow crystals for rock (left behind by bulldozers)
- 24 water barrels (printed tokens)
- 24 dry powder explosive fire extinguisher balls (printed tokens)
- 2 bulldozers or shovels
- 1 helicopter
- 62 event cards (12 FOREST FIRE cards; 40 WEATHER cards; 2 CATASTROPHE cards, 4 DROUGHT cards, 3 LUCKY BREAK cards, 1 WIND DIRECTION arrow card)
- 2 20-sided dice: row and column
- 1 6-sided die
- 1 large arrow (WIND DIRECTION card) to indicate the wind direction
Play
At the start of each turn, player draws an event card. After play, cards that do not specify the current wind direction and speed are discarded.
If the card is a WEATHER card, player spreads each active wildfire. If the weather card also specifies wind direction, that becomes the prevailing wind — before spreading the fires.
If the card is a CATASTROPHE or LUCKY BREAK card or DROUGHT card, the player performs the action directed by the card, then discards the card and continues with their turn.
If the card is a FOREST FIRE card:
- The card will indicate how many acres to cover with fire.
- Roll the two 20-sided dice to determine where the fire starts (add 2 to avoid the border)
- Place red crystals on each acre with fire.
- Player’s turn is then over if they started a fire.
If the card was not a FOREST FIRE card, then player has 4 choices, only one per turn:
- Get (place on the board) new equipment: 1 helicopter, or 1 bulldozer or 3 waters, or 2 extinguisher balls.
- Move water or extinguishers (must be already on the board)
- Move a bulldozer up to 5 acres (and/or dig a trench)
- Move the helicopter up to 10 acres (and/or dump water or extinguisher balls on the fire)
Risks and challenges
The biggest risk is that the manufacturing cost per game is more than typical because we love 3D pieces, this game has many, the look is important and we are spending on art and printing. The second biggest risk is that our social network is not very large, though we hope to grow it. To mitigate these risks, we have started small, no paid employees, have budgeted only cost-recovery from this phase plus enough to start the artwork on the second game, and we have added unpaid members to our team to expand the overall project reach.
Learn about accountability on KickstarterSupport
Funding period
- (35 days)