I know what you’re thinking… No. Edmund McMillen doesn’t need you to cover his medical expenses after an unfortunate encounter with an underdone pork chop. Instead he needs your help funding his idea for a new physical card game he calls Tapeworm, and he’s chosen Kickstarter to help make that happen.
In Tapeworm players take turns constructing, well… tapeworms. At the start of the game the starting tile is placed on the board, and each player is dealt a hand of five cards, each card containing one or more worm segments as well as other special abilities. At the start of their turn, each player draws a card from the deck and then attempts to play out there hand adding on to one of the four colors of worms (red, pink, white and black) until a worm ends, they have no possible plays, or they manage to empty their entire hand. The first player to no longer have a hand wins the game.
Tapeworm was specifically designed to be simple to pick up and play with just about anyone, but also contain some complexity and higher strategy. It features McMillen’s signature gross, yet oddly endearing artstyle and can be played with up to four players.
In case you’ve never heard of Edmund McMillen before he is most well known for being an indie developer responsible for such hits as Super Meatboy and The Binding of Isaac. He was also featured in the 2012 documentary Indie Game: The Movie. McMillen has recently had success with another physical board game made possible through Kickstarter with Binding of Isaac: Four Souls.
So what does one have to pledge to actually secure a copy of Ed’s game? Well you have a few options:
- $15 Tapeworm tier: This will get you the standard edition of the game complete with the standard box.
- $25 Pink Box Edition tier: This gets you a fancier, shiny edition of the game with holographic Four Souls bonus cards.
- $35 Double Trouble tier: Get both the standard edition as well as the Pink Box edition. It’s worth noting you can combine the cards from both games to support up to six players instead of the standard four.
- $55-$60 The OG Tier… tiers: This actually includes multiple tears, but they’re all the Pink Box Edition of Tapeworm along with various editions of McMillen’s previous bored game, Binding of Isaac: Four Souls.
- $100 Signed Edition tier: Includes both the standard and Pink Box editions plus the Pink Box is signed by Edmund McMillen.
Tapeworms campaign has been up for only a day but it’s already managed to destroy it’s original goal of $25,000 USD and is well on it’s way to $400,000 as of writing this article. It’s even hit just about all of it’s stretch goals in that time, these include: Sticker sets and mini-poster to be included in all reward tiers, as well as special edition Tapeworm themed Four Souls cards to be included in all Pink Box editions. Still, whatever the campaign can raise will only make Tapeworm a even better game, so be sure to checkout it’s page and if you think it sounds like your jam, maybe consider backing it.
