A Small Victory

In the hopes of getting more people to read my blog posts I have been uploading them on my IGN account as well.  On my most recent article I talked about how slavery has not been explored to greatest possible extent within gaming.  I received a comment on IGN from a man named Brian Mayer.  He wrote:

I currently have a game I designed about the Abolitionist Movement called Freedom: The Underground Railroad that is coming out early fall from Academy Games. While not from the perspective of the slaves themselves, it looks at the the story of the Abolition, the men and women and the legislature and events that surrounded their efforts. It is a challenging cooperative game that immerses the players in the history and struggles of bringing about change as players work together to help bring down the institution of slavery in the United States.

It is currently up on Kickstarter:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/617871702/freedom-the-underground-railroad-by-academy-games

 

Freedom: The Underground Railroad casts the players as abolitionists.  As the game progresses, players must work together in order to help fugitive slaves travel from the plantations deep in the south to their freedom in Canada. However, it isn't as easy as drawing the orange card and frolicking through the Gumdrop Mountains.  The game fights back against the players in the form of Slave Catchers that randomly move around the board at the start of each player’s turn.  Runaways that are captured get resold into slavery.  But the players do have some advantages in the form of support, conductor, and fundraising tokens each with their own benefits.  The game is over after eight rounds and the players win or lose on the basis of how many fugitive slaves they helped escape to freedom and whether all of the support tokens have been purchased.  

This board game looks intriguing for two reasons:  One, it fits very well with my assertion that there needs to be a game that addresses this topic.  Secondly I’m a huge sucker for cooperative board games; Forbidden Island by Matt Leacock being a personal favorite.  I highly recommend checking out the Kickstarter page and possibly backing it as well.  The game is already doing very well on the crowd-funding website, having met the first two stretch goals.  There is still room to donate as the page is open until August 18^th.  I know I will be donating, as I’m looking forward to getting my hands on the game to see if it can satiate my desire for an Underground Railroad video game.