Skill board games are comparatively rare, and cooperative board games are even rarer. Now the author of the Spirit Island board game, R. Eric Reuss, has joined the genre and started working with For Science! a cooperative game concept devised in a setting that could hardly be more topical in view of the global corona pandemic: science. The crowdfunding campaign for For Science! runs on Kickstarter until May 2nd, but has already successfully reached the planned financing goal.

A game of For Science takes exactly a quarter of an hour! - that's fixed. The cooperative skill board game for one to six players appeals to fans of the genre, especially family and casual gamers. There is no lavish set of rules in the new game by R. Eric Reuss, who previously created Spirit Island, a comparatively mechanical but thoroughly entertaining board game.
With the remaining 18 days of the crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, almost 1.000 backers raised almost 50.000 euros to finance the cooperative skill board game - and also to do something good for the research community. For every copy of the board game sold, five US dollars go to the non-profit organization Direct Relief, which brings medicine deliveries to crisis areas.

For Science: Working together in the name of science

Jenga, Menara, Catacombs or Flick'em Up: there are some genre representatives in the skill board games. Nevertheless, the overall number is rather manageable. With For Science! A title is now added that is played in real time and requires skill in stacking shapes.

One to six players slip into the coats of researchers and science officers to research a cure for a disease. To do this, cards must first be played in a coordinated manner in order to create a chemical chain.

For Science! combines card elements, a lay-up mechanism and skill. Image: Gray Fox Games

For Science! combines card elements, a lay-up mechanism and skill. Image: Gray Fox Games

If the cure has been found in theory, the second step is the practical tests - and thus the stacking. The players then have to balance the shapes depicted on the cards in order to actually explore the cures. For successes, the players receive knowledge, which they then spend on the application of the healings. Complete healing is achieved by solving a placement puzzle.

The multi-level game principle is unique in the genre of cooperative skill board games. R- Eric Reuss has with For Science! actually created a novel concept.

Gray Fox Games comments on the issue

Because Gray Fox Games assumed in the run-up to the Kickstarter campaign that the topic of the board game in the current Corona situation could be strange for some players, the publisher immediately published a statement.

The board game has been renamed for current reasons, the original title was “Science or Die”. However, they did not want to cancel the campaign entirely, instead Gray Fox Games linked the Kirckstart of the board game with a charity campaign. For Science! is not a game about realistic science and research anyway, but a fun game that focuses on jigsaw puzzles and card reading.

The Campaign is running until May 2nd. The board game of skill For Science! then in December 2020. The minimum stake is around 45 euros.

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