Kemet creator’s latest mythological board game hits Kickstarter later today
Based on Ancient Mayan folklore.
The next mythological board game from the designer of Kemet, Guillaume Montiage, is set to have a campaign launched on Kickstarter later today.
Set in ancient Colombia, during the Mayan civilisation, Yucatan sees players becoming rival leaders of their own cities. In the hopes of gaining the favour of the gods for their people and protecting them from their wrath, the players will need to make sacrifices, acquire fortune and take control of rival cities. Making sacrifices to the gods will gain players more power to use in the next round, however, overdoing it too early can lead to losses in the long run. Throughout the game, players will need to find a balance between sacrificing and retaining their resources.
On a player’s turn, they can decide to move their troops and engage in combat with their opponents. Whenever players instigate a battle, they’ll be able to choose how many of their troops they want to assign to the fight - the more troops a player has, the more likely they are to win. Players can also decide to play a card from their hand to boost their power or cause losses for the enemy army, with each card leading to a different outcome. Players who win fights are able to take control of the area their troops occupy, thereby increasing their chances of winning.
Fighting will gain players prisoners as well as land, which they can choose to sacrifice to their gods in order to acquire more power and even the support of mythological creatures and heroes. However, every time a player makes a sacrifice, they will have to make an even larger sacrifice the next time in order to gain the god’s favour. At the end of the fourth season, whichever player has the most victory points becomes the overall winner.
Apart from designing Yucatan and Kemet, Montiage is responsible for creating the original game that inspired Kemet - Nefertiti - as well as last year’s re-release of the title, Kemet: Blood and Sand. Montiage is also a co-creator of the escape room board game Unlock!: Timeless Adventures.
Dicebreaker reached out to the publisher behind Yucatan, Matagot - the company that also released Kemet and the Ancient Greek inspired board game Cyclades - as to whether any cultural consultants had been hired, considering the game's themes of human sacrifice and its use of Colombian history and culture. In response, a representative from Matagot stated that the studio had worked with an “expert of the time period”, but did not confirm whether a cultural consultant had also been involved.
In the Kickstarter campaign set to be launched later today, backers will be able to pledge €70 ($79/£50) in order to get a copy of the base version of Yucatan, with estimated delivery dates yet to be confirmed.