Rewriting Time For A Thief’s Fortune

August 7, 2018 by ludicryan

Fire up the Deloreon - wait, wrong era. Collect those sands of time - hang on, wrong medium. Get ready to gaze into your duplicitous future in A Thief's Fortune from Artipia Games.

Coming back after an achingly close campaign in June, the team at Artipia have redesigned component aspects of A Thief's Fortune to make it more economically viable for gamers when it returns to Kickstarter on August 14th. A Thief's Fortune is a card drafting and engine building game for one to four players.

Each player manages their cards in front of them into a past present and future. Cards are drafted from a collective future pool in the centre giving them resources to use in manifesting a most promising timeline for the thief at the centre.

The game is jam-packed full of interesting ideas both narratively and mechanically! The story follows a thief as they discover a mystical hourglass which allows them to see into the future (think Prince of Persia meets Aladin).

Each player isn't playing an individual thief, but a different possible timeline of the same thief. The winner is determined by who can create the most promising timeline for our dear, hunted thief.

The mechanic of using the past, present and future to draft and use cards is a fascinating way to structure the way the game is played. Cave In is another title which showcases the ability to use a characters past and present card usage to the advantage of another.

A Thief's Fortune is placed within a really interesting development in board games where time is not just a narrative consideration but a mechanical one as well.

If you could choose any future for your thief, what would it be?