In Coloma, the players are gold prospectors come to California to strike it rich in the infamous Gold Rush of ’49. Players secretly choose actions each round, possibly including prospecting for gold, setting up prospector camps, hiring workers and gunmen, or building up part of the town of Coloma. Buildings offer an “engine building” mechanic, granting additional actions and privileges to the builder.
Each round, a rotating component changes the actions available, and each time it hits “high noon,” there is a shootout. During the shootout, the players collectively must defend the town from outlaws, in a semi-cooperative element. After the third shootout, the player with the most points from camps and buildings, less penalties for their dead gunmen, wins the game.
Coloma was created by Jonathan “JonnyPac” Cantin (Hangtown) and is intended for 1 to 5 players, ages 13 and up. Games take about 90 minutes to play. It includes 1 main board, 5 player boards, 5 action selector dials, 2 rotating tiles, 100 cards, 6 wooden character tokens, 38 tiles, 147 wooden tokens, 1 cardboard badge, 30 wooden cubes, 64 cardboard tokens, and 5 reference sheets, with artwork by Mihajlo Dimitrievski (Raiders of the North Sea). MSRP is $59.00.Final Frontier Games is funding the production of Coloma through a Kickstarter campaign that has attracted $161,462 in pledged support from 2,100 backers as of this writing (an average of $76.89 per backer). The campaign includes a retailer-only backer option, which allows participating retailers access to the Kickstarter-exclusive “Deluxe Version” of the game, which features upgraded components and five additional characters for players to choose from. The game will premiere at the Spiel fair in Essen, Germany in October, with backer fulfillment scheduled for November and release into the trade to follow.