What if trebuchets, siege towers, and invading armies were utterly adorable? That's the driving idea behind Forfort, a two to four player tile placement board game that turns the medieval era's most impressive fortifications into a puzzle experience - and reading the rules reminds me more than a little of head-to-head puzzle videogames like Poyo Pop Fever and Puzzle Bobble.
Forfort is the first Kickstarter project by French studio Les "Éditions 12H12", as well as the board game illustration debut for superbly-named artist Chevalier Gambette. Whether this little strategy board game is successful or not I hope that the industry notices Gambette's work, because the artwork is both utterly charming and - critically - perfectly legible for game play.
We haven't seen a preview copy of Forfort, but the rules are available to download for free in both English and French from the Kickstarter, and they seem genuinely interesting. The goal of the game is to build the best castle you can while stymying your opponent's attempts. You'll construct your castle wall by wall, with the first player to fill in all eight spaces triggering the game end and getting a points bonus during the final accounting.
Your draw pile sits as the dungeon in the center of your castle. In a very neat piece of game design, the back of each card has a pair of arrows pointing to specific spaces around the dungeon, and if you want to use your action on your turn to play a card as a wall it needs to be in one of the indicated spaces. So as you draw a new card at the end of each turn, you'll reveal a new card back, and your building options will change unpredictably.
Wall cards may also contain one or two ability icons, which you can activate by discarding the card from your hand instead of playing it as a wall. Battering rams can destroy the front walls of the enemy castle, while trebuchets can reach deep inside to wreck the rear two ranks. Garrisons can deploy an army into the enemy castle and munch through it like a very destructive caterpillar, siege towers can topple cards from the enemy dungeon into their discard pile, and masons let you pull a card out of your discard pile and immediately build it into your fort.
You can also discard a card to build a camp, which can go anywhere in the castle and which allows you to later build a wall on that spot regardless of what the dungeon requires you to do. Placing a drawbridge into your castle lets you take another turn, while placing two walls with matching action symbols side by side lets you immediately take an empowered version of that action - such as firing off a trebuchet to destroy one of the rare 'protected' walls that are normally immune to such attacks.
Reading the rules really tickled the part of my brain that enjoys head to head abstract puzzle games - each turn you get a random prompt on how you should build your castle, and doing a really good job will send a rain of misfortune at your opponent's own structure. The team mode is also interesting - it's a very small addition, in which each player has one direct opponent, but can choose to assist their ally by building camps for them or removing enemy armies.
The Kickstarter is open until January 11, and pledging for a copy of the game will cost you $22 (£17) plus postage.
If you do give Forfort a try - or if you know of any games that capture the vibes of competitive abstract puzzle games even better - let us know in the Wargamer Discord community. We're always eager to hear what people have been trying out. To get a weekly roundup of the best stories on Wargamer, make sure you're subscribed to our weekly newsletter.