Lyssan… A Kickstarted Game You may have Missed

Aug 22, 2011

Sam Brown has successfully Kickstarted his upcoming game Lyssan. If you didn’t hear about it, you might want to add it to your watch list, as it looks like a game with potential. The game raised $31,632 of their original $20,000 goal. Unfortunately, I missed my shot.

Here’s a bit more info to get the juices flowing plus I recommend taking a look at the video on the Kickstarter page.

Lyssan is an intense board game of strategy, cooperation, and betrayal for two to four players.

You are the one true ruler of the broken Empire of Lyssan, and it’s up to you to put the pretenders (the other players) in their place before their endless squabbling tears your nation apart. Command knights and nobles, priests and spies. Prove to the lords of the land that your claim is the only true one, and exile the pretenders to a very comfortable island very, very far away.

Lyssan has a depth of strategy and diplomacy to rival the classics, with the clean play and elegance of the best modern games.

Lyssan rewards adaptability: The victory conditions of the game are different each time. At the start of the game, a row of trophy cards is laid out face down. The winner is the player to take the most trophy cards. Each turn a new trophy is flipped face up, with its own conditions for how it must be won.

Lyssan rewards deep thought: You can look across the board, and know how any confrontation is likely to turn out, because there are no dice in the game. But the game is quite dynamic: each player can perform a few exceptional surprise moves each turn by card play. From a hand of many options, you have to choose the few that help you best: The more powerful a card is, the more others you’ll have to discard to play it.

Lyssan rewards diplomacy: This is a game of cooperation and betrayal. Only one player can come out on top, but it’s often easier to help others than to help yourself. The winning player knows how to cut deals and minimize their exposure to treachery. You’ll also need to bluff your own intentions, and keep a good poker face when you get a sneak peek at an upcoming trophy card.