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Welcome to Arzium, land of ancient civilizations, bizarre creatures, unexplained wonders, and vibrant characters.
A great sleeping sickness has spread across the land, sending every type of creature to roam for hundreds of miles in a dazed, incoherent march. It's your job to seek them out and wake them from their sleepwalk, recruiting them to help you find even more lost souls!
In Roam, you and up to three friends compete to find lost adventurers. The game includes more than fifty unique, tarot-sized adventurer cards, which feature characters from Near and Far, Above and Below, and Islebound. The opposite side of each card depicts a landscape split into six squares, and two rows of three of these cards are placed in the center of the playing area to make the board.
Each turn, you may activate one of the adventurer cards in your party by flipping the card face down. Activating an adventurer allows you to place search tokens on the board in the shape depicted on your adventurer card. When every square on a landscape card has been searched, the player who did the most claims the card, finding the lost adventurer and adding them to their party. Each adventurer you add to your party gives you points and a new search pattern that you can use.
When searching, you also claim coins, which can be spent to use special actions or purchase artifacts with useful powers. When one player has ten adventurers in their party, the game ends, and the player with the most points wins.
—description from the publisher
Reload Kickstarter Preview
- Accessible and quick to teach
- Feels like a compact battle royale on a tight board
- Engaging loot, traps, and combat system
- Fame track provides a clear, visual progression
- Asymmetric abilities add replayability and depth
- Team-play synergy options
- Prototype is unfinished; rules and components are still in development
- Balance and depth may be limited for hardcore players
- Final Kickstarter content may alter some mechanics
- Celebrity fame and corporate sponsorship in a battle royale setting
- A dystopian near-future televised arena where cloned super soldiers battle for fame.
- Competitive spectacle with a game-show flavor centered on gaining fame
- Apex Legends
- Fortnite
- Spartacus: Blood and Sand (Gale Force Nine remake)
- Call of Duty: Warzone
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- asymmetric_abilities — Characters have alternate sides with unique abilities to increase replayability and style variety.
- beacons_and_achievements — Beacons grant fame; achievements provide tokens and align with the loot and trap systems.
- building_and_traps — Players can build walls to block movement and place traps; traps use a rock-paper-scissors mechanic when activated.
- dice_pool/combat_resolution — Attack and defense use five action dice per player; dice are lined up from highest to lowest and compared to determine injuries.
- fame_tracking — A long fame track where players gain fame via various actions, aiming to reach Superstar status.
- injury_tracking — Each injury moves a die into an injury category, reducing future dice pools; if all dice are injured, the player must reload.
- loot_and_equipment_progression — Loot actions yield equipment across three tiers; drop boxes provide higher-tier loot via map events.
- parachuting_and_landing — Initial parachute deployment onto a randomly generated board, with landing success determined by dice.
- toxin_and_zone_closure — Toxin tokens tighten the play area, forcing the game toward a closing safe zone.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- building walls to defend yourself
- death is never the end but you don't want to go quietly into the night
- there's lots of really interesting ways that you can customize your character
- the combat system is clean and simple
- it's quick, it's clean, and it's accessible to a wide range of people
References (from this video)
- Thematic flavor tied to exploration and the West
- Progression through region unlocking provides a sense of advancement
- Strong two-player strategic potential
- Transcript lacks details on conflict resolution or combat mechanics
- Publishers/designers/year data not provided
- Exploration, tools, and transportation shaping regional expansion.
- The American West, explored through pen-and-card mechanics and character-driven action.
- Adventure-focused, with character-driven tasks that unlock regions as play progresses.
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- pen-and-card character matching — Use drawing or card-based elements to align characters with tools and transport for actions.
- region unlocking — New territories open up as players meet certain conditions, expanding options and scoring potential.
- tools and transportation — Acquisition and deployment of tools and transport options enable exploration and region progression.
- Two-Player Strategy — Head-to-head play emphasizes tactical positioning and counterplay in a shared theme.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
References (from this video)
- Iconic euro staples and strong player interaction
- economic strategy with rerouting supply
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- area control / auction — competitive bidding and spatial strategy shape the map.
- Auction / Bidding — competitive bidding and spatial strategy shape the map.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- I'm trying to only keep the games that I really love because of course I have so many games coming through on the channel.
- Theme isn't really important to me. It's all about the mechanisms.
- I do share a collection with my brother.
- Beige euros.