As the new year rolls on, the 2021 slate of games continues to grow as publishers reveal their new Kickstarters and launches. The newest one came earlier today when Stonemaier Games (Euphoria: Ignorance Is Bliss, Scythe) announced they’d be publishing a board game based on Pierce Brown’s Red Rising series of dystopian sci-fi novels, with a preorder going up early next month.
The bestselling Red Rising series is set on Mars, in a dystopian future where a person’s entire life is dictated by which part of the color-based caste system you belong to. It consists of five novels as well as a prequel comic series by Dynamite Comics titled Red Rising: Sons of Ares. The game is a “passion project” for Stonemaier’s owner and lead designer Jamey Stegmaier, who co-designed the game with newcomer Alexander Schmidt over a five year period. In it, you represent a house trying to rise in power by gaining and using followers as effectively as possible. The gameplay is described by the publisher as such:
“Red Rising is a hand-management, combo-building game for 1-6 players (45-60 minute playing time). You start with a hand of five cards, and on your turn you deploy one of those cards to a location on the board, activating that location’s benefit. You then gain the top card from another location (face up) or the deck (face down), adding it to your hand as you enhance your end-game point total.“
Red Rising Collector’s Edition is set for pre-order in March, with fulfillment coming after that. A standard edition is also planned for later this year.
Images via Stonemaier Games
