Euphoria Now Running on Kickstarter

Those of you who enjoy taking a peek into dystopian futures will no doubt want to give a look at one of the latest board games to hit Kickstarter: Euphoria from Stonemaier Games. Two to five players will compete to rule a world which, truth be told, none of us would like to live… But we’re cool with gaming in it! Euphoria is slated for a pre-Christmas release and has already reached its funding goal while continuing to run through June 13th.

About the project:

Build a city, enhance allegiances, and expand control using worker dice in this dystopian-themed board game for 2-5 players.

The creators of the successful Kickstarter game, Viticulture, bring you a new dice worker placement game set in a dystopian future. Euphoria incorporates mechanical elements of Alien Frontiers, Tzolk’in, and The Resistance with thematic inspirations from dystopian fiction like The Hunger Games, Fahrenheit 451, Wool, and Brave New World.

In Euphoria, you lead a team of workers (dice) and recruits (cards) to claim ownership of the dystopian world. You will generate commodities, dig tunnels to infiltrate the opposition, construct markets, collect artifacts, strengthen allegiances, and fulfill secret agendas.

Fully formatted rules here and here, and here are some of the unique elements of Euphoria:

• Dice Represent Worker Knowledge: The number on each die represents a worker’s knowledge–that is, their level of awareness that they’re in a dystopia. Worker knowledge enables various bonuses and impacts player interaction. If the collective knowledge of all of your workers gets too high, one of them might desert you.
• Recruits and Allegiances: You have 2 elite recruit cards. One has pledged allegiance to you, but the other needs some convincing. You can reveal and use the reluctant recruit by reaching certain milestones in the game…or by letting other players unwittingly reach those milestones for you.
• Constructing Markets: Players who don’t contribute to the construction of markets receive a dystopian-style restriction they must deal with for the rest of the game. Because different markets are available for construction each game, commodities and resources that are valuable in one game might not be worth as much in the next.
• Flow of the Game: There are no rounds and phases in Euphoria, and thus no need to determine the first player on a regular basis or memorize action checklists. On your turn you either place a worker on the board or retrieve workers from the board.

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Jeff McAleer

Founder/Editor-in-chief of The Gaming Gang website and host of The Gaming Gang Dispatch and other TGG media, Jeff tackles any and all sorts of games but has a special fondness for strategy, conflict sims, and roleplaying games. Plus, he's certainly never at a loss for an opinion...

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