Every now and then, we’ll find a Kickstarter game we want to back. We were among the first stores to carry Dungeon World and Durance because we backed them on Kickstarter. Machine of Death is our newest find, a card game of creative assassination from the minds of webcomic creators David Malki (Wondermark) and Kris Straub (Broodhollow) and game designer David Fooden.
From the Boardgamegeek description:
Machine of Death: The Game of Creative Assassination is a storytelling game set in a world in which a machine can predict how a person will die with 100% accuracy with only a small blood sample. However, the machine delights in being vague and twisted. A card reading “Old Age” could mean you die in your sleep at age 120, or it could mean you’re run over tomorrow by an elderly driver who forgot to take his pills today. Players of the game take the role of assassins, who must use the various tools at their disposal — from storytelling to a slew of items available from specialty Black Market shops — to create a situation in which a target is killed in a way in line with their Death Prediction. The Machine of Death Game uses this basic idea, of assassins working in a world were cause of death is known to create various game modes.
Machine of Death is very similar to Cards Against Humanity or Apples to Apples, and is recommended to fans of those games. There’s also a co-op mode where players are teams of assassins, a “Cutthroat mode” where players assassinate one another and “day off mode,” which isn’t about murder at all but rather draws upon your bevy of assassin skills to accomplish tasks like “opening a stuck jam jar” and “transplanting a tulip bulb.”
In addition to the core game, we have the first two expansions, Webcomics Chums and Webcomics Pals, featuring cards designed by a variety of webcomics creators, including the creators of Dinosaur Comics, Diesel Sweeties, SMBC, Octopus Pie, Chester 5000XYV and lots more.
