Smoke rises on the horizon. A fire rages somewhere in the heart of the forest. From the height of a fire tower, you command the efforts to defend your tower and take down your opponents. With each turn, the inferno grows. Harness the power of the wind to push the blaze towards the other towers, clear tracts of land to fortify your tower, hinder the plans of your opponents with torrents of water, and unleash an arsenal of fire cards upon your foes.
Fire Tower is a strategic pattern laying and hand management for developed by Brooklyn and Martha’s Vineyard-based designers Samuel Bryant and Gwen Ruelle. The rules are simple to learn and explain, but an ever changing environment mean no two games will ever be the same. Set up takes seconds, and you can achieve a heavier games by trying the team variant. Also, the artwork (Kevin Ruelle) is striking.
Our own Crymson Pleasure had an opportunity to talk to Runaway Parade co-founder Gwen about their work on Fire Tower, currently on Kickstarter.
Tell us about the game.
Fire Tower is a 2-4 player competitive forest fire game where players must fight fire with fire. Most fire games are cooperative with players working together to beat back the flames and contain the chaos, but in Fire Tower your only objectives are to protect your own tower and send the flames towards your opponents.
The wind is one of the main mechanics in the game, an unrelenting force that continually swells the flames. At the start of each player’s turn they must expand the fire in the current wind direction. Players also have a hand of five action cards that allow them to influence events on the board. Wind cards allow players to harness the destructive force of the gale and direct it at their opponents. Fire cards give the ability to add various patterns of fire to the board, and each variety has its own tactical advantages. Water cards beat back the flames and slow the efforts of determined opponents. Firebreak cards allow players to remove combustible vegetation and create barriers to block the encroaching flames. Every tower comes equipped with a trusty bucket for use in emergency situations. Also beware the Firestorm card, whose destructive power appears once per deck cycle and will dramatically expand the blaze.
To succeed in Fire Tower players must learn to effectively manage the resources in their hands, and use sound spatial planning to deploy them. The game incorporates an intuitive play structure that takes minutes to learn and requires negligible set-up. Each card includes a grid that visually explains the ways it can be used, saving new players from having to constantly refer to the rulebook. Although the core mechanics are easy to grasp, an ever shifting environment forces players to switch up their tactics and experiment with varied strategies, making Fire Tower a difficult game to master and each play through a fresh experience.
What was your inspiration to create it?
The guiding idea that led to the of the creation of Fire Tower was that we wanted a mechanic that would force players to work against an unstoppable force, something that could be slowed but never contained, a growing sense of urgency, a situation that became more unmanageable over time. We wanted players to not only contend with their opponents but also the personality of the game, something more unpredictable than the other people sitting around the table. We also wanted a theme that felt underutilized in tabletop, and a forest fire game, especially a competitive one, felt like it fit all this criteria. The moment of inspiration for joining the theme and mechanics actually occurred while we were on a walk in the state forest in Massachusetts. Research into forest fires really helped guide the development of the game.
When should we expect to see it?
After working on the game for almost 3 years we’re happy to announce that we’ll be launching our Kickstarter on April 24th! In the meantime, we’ll be at several conventions. Find us on Facebook to see where we are headed next!
Follow Runaway Parade on Twitter and Facebook for the latest news about Fire Tower.
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