First Impressions of FOUNDERS – Beyond The Ice

Almost three years ago, I wrote about ICE, the first release by publisher “This Way!”. It was your typical example of what 2021 crowd funding was like: a gorgeous Kickstarter extravaganza created by previously unknown designers, Youtube content creator’s hyping up the game, expensive all-in pledges but beautifully illustrated and with great table presence. Players would dig through layers and layers of hex tiles to progressively reveal and score artifacts on a striking looking map. They could block each other, steal workers, and time it so they were the ones that lifted the last remaining piece and excavated a particular scoring tile. That premise alone held much promise. It could have been a light-to-mid weight, highly interactive abstract wrapped in a lovely theme. In reality though, ICE’s beautiful exterior was matched with a shaky at best game design that—from what I could see—didn’t fundamentally seem to change with its second edition. Around the time of the fulfilment of ICE, a…