Now on Kickstarter: Zambezi: The Expedition Game by Burley Games

Burley Games has launched a Kickstarter project for their newest game Zambezi: The Expedition Game by designers Peter and Jonathan Burley. Burley Games is also the same company that brought Kamisado to the market, an excellent abstract game. In Zambezi players will start at the base of Victoria Falls with a set amount of fuel and crew and race down the Zambezi river trying to reach Lake Kariba while trying to avoid crocodiles and rocks, carefully spending fuel, collecting treasures and filming documentaries.

"It is the late 1950s. You are a daring tugboat captain, exploring the mysterious depths of southern Africa. Be the first to sail your vessel from Victoria Falls along the famous Zambezi river to Lake Kariba. On the way you must avoid hungry crocodiles, which cause you to burn valuable fuel units, and rocks, which result in your crew members being lost overboard and may delay your tugboat's progress." Zambezi is a fun board game that is ideal for the family market, but also one which has sufficient depth of strategy and competitive edge to appeal to (and amuse) the more experienced gamer. Decisions require to be made regarding the management of your resources, particularly your precious units of fuel, which you need use sparingly to help you navigate around the many hazards on the river. You will need to try to preserve and maintain your crew (who tend to get lost overboard if you hit rocks or other boats during your journey). And you must try to avoid the spaces that contain nasty groups of hungry crocodiles. If you land on these, you will have to burn lots of valuable fuel on your next turn to allow you to escape from them.

During play 2-8 players will draw cards that have a number value and will allow them to move that number of spaces; they have the option to spend fuel to draw extra cards that will give them more choices of what to play. These choices are important because some of the spaces are populated with groups of crocodiles and piles rocks. The rocks will make you lose crew members overboard and the crocodiles will make you spend fuel to get away. Additionally you may want to land on a space that has a dock and contains various treasures and/or extra fuel stopping here will allow you to choose one of the options available. Another reason to be careful with how many cards you draw is any that remain after your turn are left face up for other players to take instead of the draw pile, so you may reveal cards that other players can use more effectively than you. Cards are also used to create documentaries of various wildlife you see along the way. Documentaries can only be started with a value 1 card and are continued in numerical order. All cards for a given documentary must contain the same animal artwork on them. The winner of the game is not necessarily whoever reached the end first, instead points are calculated based on race order, treasure collected, best documentary (longest), and the amount of fuel you have at the finish so there are different strategies to try to win the game. Additionally Zambezi can be played as a pure racing game, leaving out the treasures and documentaries and the winner is the first to the end. Zambezi looks to be an interesting, entertaining, and exciting family game with more strategy then one would first assume. The use of fuel to draw cards to allow more choices to the individual while also potentially helping other players, deciding to stop along the way to pick up extra fuel/treasures, the ability to build documentaries that will take cards away from other players as well as potentially score you more points at the end there are definitely some decisions to be made in this game. The artwork is bright and colorful and illustrated by Vicki Paull and Steve Tolley. So if you ever wanted to race down an African river or are looking for a fun family game that will also keep gamers interested check out Zambezi: The Expedition Game on Kickstarter.