A couple of years ago I stumbled upon Free League's Tales From the Loop and was absolutely blown away. I backed the Kickstarter, tracked down some of Simon Stålenhag's art books and delved into a 1980's world of Goonies-esque fun. The RPG was followed by Things From The Flood, a second companion game set in the 90s, that could be joined to the earlier game or played without ever getting involved in the earlier version.

Now they're taking the original hit premise, that became a tv series, to the tabletop in the form of a board game that's launched today on Kickstarter 

In 1954, the government ordered the construction of the world’s largest particle accelerator. The facility was completed in 1969, located deep below the pastoral suburban countryside, outside of the big city. The local population called this marvel of technology the Loop. Over the years since it was built, strange phenomena have started to appear in the area - mysterious creatures stalking the land, machines malfunctioning in inexplicable ways.

The game is back in the original Scandiwegian setting as your players explore and solve mysteries thrown up by the Loop around their island home, all while getting back in time for tea.

Set for 1 to 5 players the characters explore phenomena that pop up around the island and attempt to investigate and solve the mysteries co-operatively. Every round is a new day and the game is played over two weeks. To begin a game a scenario card is drawn to give your kids a goal, but new cards are drawn every turn that open up the world and allow the adventures to evolve and flow without ever being the same.

Each round is a day in the life of your kid and is broken into three phases. The first of which is the school phase, well you are playing kids, did you think you'd have all the free time to roam about doing what you want? Here is where you may find rumours to help you, or distract you from what you should be doing. Once the players get through the school day they move onto the second phase-Adventure.

Time is limited when you're a kid, between school and chores and getting home for curfew there's not much time for adventure left! But here is where the fun is, cycling around the islands, or hopping on a bus to explore the far reaches of the island to see what those machines are doing. Maybe you've got your cousins staying and you've bragged that you can hack the firewall on a Paarhufer MK79! (why would you do that? You don't know how to do that)

Whatever it happens to be, make the best use of your time and don't be home too late as eventually your rambling will be curtailed by your parents grounding you. The End phase is home time, get back, do your chores and tidy up the board before it's off to bed to await a new day and new adventures

Currently, the game uses standees for the players but there are four lovely machines that will be produced by Dust Studios they won't be painted in the basic pledge, but they really capture the feel of Simon's art and I'll be very interested to see what stretch goals they have in the wings. As you can imagine the styling and art is already very good and they have a print and play demo version of the alpha rules which have a consistent look from the RPG.

For people who want to explore the Loop but maybe aren't into roleplaying this game looks like it could be ideal. It looks like it captures the feel of a gang of kids trying to balance awesome adventures with all the stuff that gets in the way, like cleaning and homework, without detracting from the fun. They've already funded and I imagine they'll fill stretch goals like a Goonie filling their pockets with One-Eyed Willies treasure.

Don't let the giant machines distract you from the dinosaurs...