Fearsome Wilderness

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Game miniatures depicting various fearsome critters from Fearsome Wilderness.

Fearsome Wilderness is a cooperative board game and miniatures collection created by Matt Cross and released in 2020. In Fearsome Wilderness, Players work together drawing cards, rolling dice, and moving miniatures around the gameboards to complete scenario specific goals outlined in the rulebook.

The game is set in a woodland environment and features the American folk heroes of Paul Bunyan, Babe the Blue Ox, Calamity Jane, and Johnny Appleseed, as well as 25 different fearsome critters from American folklore. The game includes 12 scenarios in a campaign called "Twelve weeks til winter."^[1]

A Kickstarter project for the game, launched in October of 2020, was successfully funded within the first 24 hours of the campaign. Kickstarter backers had options to pledge for digital print-and-play versions of the game as well as a physical boxed version of the game.

Gameplay[]

In Fearsome Wilderness, players have "12 weeks" to prepare a folk hero for winter and construct a log cabin as shelter. The game is cooperative and can be played solo or with up to 4 players but all four folk hero protagonists are to be used. Each game session, which represents one week, is played out on a large game board with 5 spaces on which players move their miniatures and resources. During set up, players populate the game-board using cards or miniatures representing various trees and fearsome critters. During the game players will also gain negative or positive condition cards, which they must manage while trying to accomplish scenario specific goals as described in the rule book. Each round has a two game phases: day and night. During the night phase, critters will attack folk heroes and certain cards will state that some players must experience nightmares, which have corresponding stories in the rule book.^[2]

There are two sets of custom dice included:

• 6 "Folk Hero Dice" for taking any of the 6 main actions: "gather food," "gather water," "fell trees," "fight fearsome critters," "rest" or "heal" to remove negative physical or mental conditions, or "take damage" from a wilderness accident

• 6 "Critter Dice" used when interacting and determining damage from the fearsome critters in the game.

A game session is considered a success if the players complete the scenario's goals before the end of the day phase on the Sunday round. When playing the "Twelve Weeks til Winter" campaign, which spans 12-24 game sessions, players will record the details of the session on the folk hero's "journal" score-pad, if they were successful, or repeat a scenario one time before moving to the next one. At the end of all 12 scenarios, players calculate their score and read a corresponding end game story as a conclusion.

Development[]

Fearsome Wilderness was created by Matt Cross, a miniature painter, tabletop gamer, and 3D printing hobbyist, who goes by the online pseudonym DystopiaMatt. Since much of the development took place during the global pandemic of 2020, unable to meet in person, playtesting was done on software called Tabletop Simulator and a focus was placed on making the game playable solo, available to print and play at home, and game pieces that could be created via consumer 3D printing technologies.

The creator wanted to make a game that featured cryptids from American folklore and developed game mechanics that would have fun encounters with the mythical creatures called fearsome critters because he found them well suited for a tabletop board game and unique in that they hadn't appeared in many other games or pop culture. In addition to the public domain works of American folklore, inspiration for the game came from a man named Dick Proenneke who built a log cabin by himself and lived alone in Twin Lakes, Alaska for many years. Inspiration for the game mechanics came from the creators' fondness for yahtzee-style, push-your-luck dice rolling systems used in games like King of Tokyo however he wanted to add to the mechanic and have a more story driven experience. Matt also wanted a game that could embrace the hobbyists and maker communities and enable fans to make the game unique through methods such as crafting, painting, tabletop terrain building and 3D printing.

The game originally was only intended to be played by laying cards flat on the game board with cardboard standees for the folk heroes, but as development progressed, the creator began working with digital sculptors to make 3D models to represent terrain, tokens, heroes, and all 25 different fearsome critters. The core game comes with 4 game miniatures for the protagonists and a miniature to represent the creepy well location, but the other miniatures can all be purchased to 3D printed at home or through a 3D print shop that has a license to sell the miniatures. Many of the optional 3D printable miniatures were unlocked through Kickstarter stretch goals.

Prototypes of the game were made in the creators garage using a CNC laser etcher for the wood dice, resin 3D printing for the miniatures, FDM style 3D printing for terrain, and traditional 2D printing for other paper components.

The game was launched as a Kickstarter project on October 6th and was successfully funded within the first 24 hours. The Kickstarter campaign ran for 30 days and when it ended on November 5th, 2020, 403 backers had pledged $26,271. During the Kickstarter campaign, all of stretch goals to create additional fearsome critter miniatures were unlocked as well as upgrades to the rule book making it a hardcover book and upgrades to the folk hero miniatures that gives them a cosmetic ink wash treatment. Late pledge was then available on MyMiniFactory starting on December 8th, 2020 but only for the 2D print and play version of the game and the 3D printable miniatures.

Reception[]

Fearsome Wilderness has received mostly positive reviews from players and currently holds a score 8.4 out of 10 on BoardGameGeek.^[3]

References[]

External links[]

• Official Site