Restoration Games has been in business for about a year now. Their mission is to find old games that had a spark of greatness, but were held back by the state of the board game industry. They had announced three projects so far, until Gen Con 2017. They came out at the Dice Tower panel during the event to announce their hottest game yet: Fireball Island: The Curse of Vul-Kalar.
The game is going to be a re imagining of the, now ancient and legendary, board game Fireball Island. It was originally released in 1986 and is remembered fondly by people who grew up in that era as “The crazy marble game.” (OK. It might just be me that remembers it that way, but I digress.)Players took on the role of explorers on a mysterious island searching for a long lost treasure. The game’s most memorable feature is its game board. It was made using vacuum formed plastic and featured Val-Kur, the volcano, at its center. I’ll never forget the commercials that showed a rad marble spitting out of the volcano and rolling down the games path wildly and knocking players to their doom. The game’s visuals DEFINITELY masked some of its flaws. By modern standards this is a roll and move game. Its hardly better than games like Sorry.
Fortunately, Restoration Games is on the case. Their new game will be less of a direct remake of the original, and more of a redesign that will include all new game play designed by Rob Daviau, JR Honeycutt and the rest of the team. The goal is to help create the game we remember loving even if it isn’t much like the game we played. It will also have physical components designed by Noah Adelman (That’s the guy behind Mech’s vs Minions.)
We don’t have many details now, but we do know that they will be launching a Kickstarter campaign later on this year and are currently planning on a 2018 release. If you want to know more, then you can sign up here to be on the mailing list. I also recommend following their Instagram account for behind the scenes access.