Root studio’s next game Fort gets a release date this summer
Cutesy remake of civilisation-building card game SPQF.
Fort, the upcoming card game from Root publisher Leder Games, will be released later this summer.
Fort was first revealed last October as a remake of designer Grant Rodiek’s 2018 card game SPQF. SPQF - a play on the ancient Roman term SPQR - was a deckbuilding game that saw players grow an ancient civilisation by acquiring and playing cards. Any player can activate a weaker version of an action after an opponent plays a card, allowing players to take actions during every turn. Players also have the option to purchase unused cards from their opponents.
SPQF was Kickstarted in the summer of 2018 and delivered to backers later that year by Rodiek’s indie label Hyperbole Games. At the time, Rodiek said that the crowdfunding campaign would be the only way to get a copy of the game.
Leder Games’ Fort swaps SPQF’s ancient civilisation-building theme for the cutesy theme of children building forts with their friends. The gameplay is similar to SPQF, with some small rules changes and improvements. It plays with two to four people in around half an hour.
The upcoming game is illustrated by Kyle Ferrin, the artist behind Root; despite SPQF originally having a similar anthropomorphic animal setting to Root’s wartorn woodland and sharing Ferrin as an illustrator, Fort has no connection to Root.
Leder announced in an email newsletter that Fort has completed development and is at the printing stage of production, giving the game an expected pre-order date toward the end of July and a release this August. The game had originally been scheduled for the now-postponed Origins Game Fair later this month, with a wide release in July. A formal release date announcement will be made next week, Leder added.
Fort is the first game from Leder not crowdfunded via Kickstarter, with the game releasing directly in stores. Other games released by the publisher include Root and its various expansions, the Vast series of asymmetrical dungeon-crawlers, and the upcoming Oath: Chronicles of Empire & Exile from Root creator Cole Wehrle.