1-5 players.
30 mins per player.
Adventure board game which takes a humorous twist on fantasy tropes. Kabula offers a sandbox RPG experience, tameable monsters, absurd encounters and strategic combat.
Find out more at www.strangergames-studio.com
Recommended for 16+ but icons allow to filter cards to make it accessible to a broader audience
Latest Updates from Our Project:
2025 the year of the Dark Scarab
about 1 month ago
– Thu, Jan 02, 2025 at 06:23:12 AM
Hello everyone, and welcome to our first update of 2025!
We hope you are having a great holiday time and enjoying some time with your dear ones!
Today we have a big update on Scarab Sands (with a Kabula cameo), Dark Waters and some legal updates for Stranger Games Studio. We look forward to a busy year ahead!
Scarab Sands
The Kickstarter campaign for our second game will launch in March 2025!
Compete as dead souls inside a pyramid, to be the only one that makes it to the Afterlife!
Gameplay: 2-4 players, very fast paced, competitive, area control. Imagine Risk, but no downtime, all players are engaged the whole time and you are done in less than 1 hour. Truth be told, it's more complex and less random than Risk (and mechanics have nothing to do with it) but the teach still takes about 5 minutes. So far, playtesters are loving it and we are just left to fine tune the map for optimal balance.
In the game you will send your scarab troops, which look something like this:
3D printed,hand painted, prototype scarabs. Sculpts by Rod Tinapay.
To fight for the control of rooms inside a pyramid.
WIP for the map by Blanka Sőre.
All of your actions will be planned secretly on a player mat hidden by screens, like this:
WIP teal blue player screen, art by Blanka Sőre.
This is a preview, in January we'll start our marketing efforts and as soon as we have the final art from Blanka, we'll print prototypes to send to reviewers. Very exciting!
So, what does this have to do with Kabula?
Wouldn't it be cool to use the the scarab minis as extra monsters in Kabula?
Example of how a scarab monster card may look like.
Adding these monsters requires only a few cards, so they’ll be included free in every box. And for those who don’t plan to support Scarab Sands, we’ll share the files for you to print your own cards. The 3D sculpts will also be added to the Kabula STL bundle.
Anybody interested in playtesting these monsters before they are released? Let us know!
Dark Waters
While everybody is making millions off existing IPs, we're creating our own stories :)
The game is still in development, but we'll soon release a Dark Waters comics set years before the events of the upcoming co-op campaign.
We'll start releasing the issues after the campaign for Scarab Sands, but if you want to check occasional updates and you don't want to join our newsletter, you can check DarkWaters on Instagram.
Preview of the first chapter of the DarkWaters comics. All work in progress!
Comics and board games are different mediums, but both let us share stories with you. We hope you will join us in this new adventure!
Company update
Since the very start, Stranger Games Studio has mostly been managed by Antonio, with the other guys supporting in various ways. As of 2025, Stranger Games Studio will cease being a S.r.l. (Ltd.) and will instead be a sole trader handled by Antonio. The other guys will still support in various ways, e.g. Miguel is a co-designer on Scarab Sands, Kyriakos handles Cyprus Comic Con etc.
Nothing will change in how we run the company or the quality of our work, we'll simply be running a leaner and more effective business :)
Have an amazing 2025!
We hope you'll keep striving for your goals and celebrating your progresses. If we have made it this far (with a little help, wink wink), you can too!
Also please make sure to play Kabula responsibly, it's important to eat and exercise regularly in-between games.
Thanks for everything and speak to you soon!
Scarab Sands Prelaunch page is up!
3 months ago
– Wed, Nov 20, 2024 at 06:40:36 AM
Hello guys, hope you are all doing great!
We have a couple of announcements today, and since we are here it's nice to take the excuse to make sure you are all still having fun with Kabula :)
Announcement n1
The prelaunch page for Scarab Sands is up! This will be our second game and we are very excited for it. If you are interested, or simply want to support us, you can click the Notify me on launch button!
Scarab Sands is a very fast paced, area control board game with scarabs fighting inside a Pyramid to grant their owners a place in the Afterlife. More info in the Prelaunch page or on BGG, but feel free to shoot any question here as well :)
Announcement n2
On November 30th, our UK team (which is Miguel and some good souls helping him) will be presenting Kabula at Dragonmeet in London.
It will be a very cool event and we love meeting backers, if you are in the area, please come and say hi!
Enough with the shameless self promotion!
How is everybody doing? Have you had any exciting game night recently?
Some months ago we teased the possibility of a Kabula co-op expansion, but aside from playtesting a couple of new mechanics we haven't had the time to really work on it yet.
On the other hand we kept playing the game almost non-stop, with friends who were requesting it and at events too.
This is our Central Europe team (which is Antonio and some good souls helping him) at Brussels Comic Con at the end of October:
Very nice event and we are still having a lot of fun with the game :) What about you? Is Kabula standing the test of time? Anything more you'd like to see in our upcoming endeavors?
We'll send more info on our plans for next year with a late December update, hope you'll be happy to read it!
Let us know how you are doing and have a great rest of your week!
To Kabula or not to Kabula...is this even a question?
8 months ago
– Mon, Jun 03, 2024 at 08:18:41 AM
Long time no see, Kabula people, Hope you are doing amazing!
This is mostly for checking in and making sure you are having a smooth experience with Kabula. At the end we also share some ideas on the future of Kabula, your feedback is always very appreciated :)
About us:
Of late, we have been around showing off Kabula. Needless to say, everybody loved it.
These are some pics from FACTS comic con in Gent:
We also started monthly Kabula gathering at Demo-Spel in Leuven (Belgium). It has been pretty cool for now, next one will be on June 27th!
Game development wise, we are working on two projects, playtesting, drawing and writing lore:
Scarab Sands, Egyptian-themed, fast paced PvP, which will be announced officially pretty soon.
Dark Waters, dark fantasy co-op campaign. This will take still some time but comics release will ease the wait for the game.
We will keep this channel Kabula focused and will only share here official announcements. If you want sneak peeks on art/development etc, our newsletter is running once a month. If you want to playtest (online), we have weekly playtests through our discord. Every help is more than appreciated and you need no specific skill to join :)
About you
Thanks again for supporting a weird project from a small company with no proven track record. If more people can enjoy Kabula today, is just because of you! So let us know how you are doing :)
Have you played Kabula already? How did you like it?
Any great moment you want to share?
Do you need any support from us?
(Or tell us about your day, that's OK too)
If you have a BGG account, it would be great if you would rate us, Brass: Birmingham is still above us.
The future of Kabula
Imagine there was a parasite taking on the brain of the guardians to make them steal the Kabula...the heroes would have no choice but to gang up together to defeat them!
The idea is an expansionwhich turns the game into aco-op adventure. New hero cards with asymmetric powers that favor interaction and combos, new items and new guardian cards that shape the scenario through tough decisions and progressively harder challenges.
Since you'd need the Kabula core game to play it and we do not want to go through a full reprint (right now), this would be a very limited print run and won't really make us rich, but we'd really like to keep offering you more Kabula content (and also want the content for ourselves...)
So what do you think, does this sound interesting?
Thanks to those who already gave feedback through our survey, extremely appreciated!
Goodbye
Thanks for reading this far, have a great week ahead and see you in the comment section!
I vote for Kabula, everywhere.
about 1 year ago
– Mon, Jan 29, 2024 at 09:48:10 AM
Hello everybody,
We hope you are having an amazing time and you are enjoying you copy of Kabula! Today we'll go quickly through the most recent news, and look forward to reading how it's going with you in the comment section :)
Fulfillment
By now, everybody should have their copy. If you don't, please let us know!
The only exception is if you are meant to receive your copy directly from us. Unfortunately GamesQuest has been incredibly slow with bulk shipments.
Ending our collaboration with them is proving very difficult and they also lost a decent amount of games which should have been in stock. It's been a nightmare experience.
A few of you contacted us for missing parts, please have a bit more of patience with this. We'll deal with of you as soon as we receive our copies, none of you has been forgotten.
Have you played already?
Unsurprisingly, checking out the opinions people have on Kabula is like opening a can of worms :)
Some love it, some hate it and some are just mean. Our skin is quite tough at this stage so we can focus on the amazing messages we got from so many of you. They really warm our hearts and reward us of all the hard work. THANK YOU <3
If you had the chance to try the game a couple of times and are comfortable enough in doing so, for us it would be really important if you could:
Leave a review or a simple rating on BGG (many people really care about this!)
Fill out our survey to let us know what you liked and what you didn't like, and potentially which ones of our future ideas are of interest.
Considering the funny theme, some people may have expected a simpler game. Kabula runs very smoothly once you are familiar with it, but still requires some effort to get the basics down. If you had issues in learning the game, please let us know, we are always up for clarifications! If you don't like reading the rulebook you can also check our How to Play video :)
Events
We are planning events for 2024. Those we are considering right now are FACTS in early April (Belgium) and UK Games Expo at the end of May (obviously in UK). We are thinking of Essen too, let's see if we have any copy in stock by then.
Are you planning on attending any of them? Are there other events you think we should attend (possibly in Europe)?
Kabula showcase and reviews
Backers and reviewers alike have taken the time to show off Kabula. We think it's just fair to repost what we find!
Our backer Chris has painted the WHOLE set of Kabula minis (pics on our own Instagram) and spoken highly of it on his podcast The Friendly Meeples Lounge. We are honored!
Our backer David posted an unboxing video. Really appreciated!
Tabletop World posted a short review and a series of unboxing videos, much appreciated and great pics!
Board Game Bollocks gave a full review of the game and not a positive one. While we are open to critics (and those he brings to the IP are interesting, and will surely be considered) we strongly believe they must have misunderstood most of the gameplay...but please form your opinion for yourself and let us know if you agree! We thank them for their time in any case and the guy is always hilarious.
Lily at Play_it_solo will soon post a review and has already posted some artistic pics, we look forward to her opinion!
New Update Schedule
Since we are waiting on a few reviews, you can expect a new update in 6-8 weeks to share them with you.
Afterwards, we will still be in touch periodically, to make sure you are doing well and to update you on events and big news, but it won't be monthly updates.
Thanks for all your support so far! Please let us know in the comments how you are doing and if you played Kabula already, we are eager to read your stories!
A Kabula Carol! Christmas 2023 recap- 2024 reveals
about 1 year ago
– Wed, Dec 27, 2023 at 07:42:45 AM
A Christmas Kabula
Merry Christmas all! Whether you celebrate it or not, we wish you the best of times and possibly some well-deserved holidays!
Hope you liked our comic strips, we thought of using them to show you in a direct way something of what we are working on for the next year (we sneaky bast....).
Today we'll talk about Kabula fulfillment, the good and bad of this campaign, and we'll ask for your feedback on the future of Kabula as well. But first, a short tangent in another direction:
Our two future projects!
Scarab Sands is a simple, yet very crunchy, PvP game with scarab troops fighting inside an Egyptian pyramid to grant their owner access to the Afterlife. Playtest is in full swing through our discord channel and we'll be ready to share some graphics within the next month. We are pushing for a KS campaign in Q2-3 2024.
The other , is a campaign game we have been teasing about for a long time. It won't be ready before 2025 and we have no name but we have been working a lot on the story, character arcs and campaign progression. We want it to be a great narrative work and thought it would be very cool if the story was told through comics, instead of just text.
But how can a poor company afford to do that?
Doing it ourselves of course :) Antonio has been practicing drawing and making panels for the last couple of months and is slowly but steadily improving. (More importantly, I am enjoying it). Below, some very early concepts. as you can see very different from the Kabula comics (which by the way was the first time I colored anything, sorry if it's a bit rough, was a very fun learning experience!)
We will release some teaser chapters and we hope to raise some hype on this new IP before launching the game. This is a lot of work, but we are extremely excited!
We hope you don't mind us taking space for these projects within a Kabula update, this is just an exception. If you want to keep up to date with them, you can subscribe to our newsletters.
Kabula Fulfillment
The fulfillment of Kabula is almost completed, with most of you already happily with your copy! We hope you had a chance to play and enjoy it :)
Some poor souls are still waiting. This includes us, and those who will get their copies from us (unfortunately bulk shipments are processed after all the others). We also heard from a couple more...but we may be missing some. If you are are still waiting for your copy and we don't know about it, please let us know, so we can fight for you!
Kabula introspection
This was our first game and first campaign and now that we have witnessed it from start to finish, we thought it was time to draw some conclusions on the Kabula experience so far.
Good Things
Well, we delivered the game, hooray! And it's a game we are still very proud of :) Our backers had the best price on the market and we kept the shipping cost what we said it would be, so we are satisfied we could offer a good deal to those who believed in us.
We included free content that was not promised: We added 2 items to the outrageous expansion, 15 poker cards in the Conspiracy expansion (10 encounters and 5 dungeons) and even added a monsters which was not unlocked in the core game. In short, every time we could increase the gameplay value without making our financial life too hard, we did it.
Bad Things
We are basically 10 months late. We lost about 5 months due to our first chosen manufacturer, and almost 3 due to GamesQuest not delivering. But to be fair we also had no idea how long some of the steps would take us. We used those first 5 months to improve the game and get things print ready. Most likely, only the GamesQuest delay is not our fault. Thanks for your patience, we have a much better idea of the process now!
We also took a series of arguable decisions. We should have included an Item count in the rulebook, but since we have one rulebook and many expansions, we put the item count on the back of each box. Everybody got confused...also the item count for the Item cards is wrong in the boxes.
We have dials with 2 and 3 layers, and some backers noted that the pins are looser when used on 2 layers only. We had dismissed the option of having different pins, as we thought that was calling for frequent mistakes during assembly, but we could have thought of other options. For example, we could have supplied spacer rings, so that all dials were 3-layer thick, also when actually using only 2 layers.
Overall
Overall, we have learning points for the next time but considering our total funding and the fact that this was our first project, we are satisfied. In the Survey at the end of this page you will be able to share your feedback on this too!
Kabula's Future Survey
In the Kickstarter mentality, while fulfilling a campaign we should announce we have an expansion launching next month, and try to ride the hype. We'd rather not do that, we have a lot of things to learn from your interaction with Kabula, your thoughts and your struggles. Our minds are already full of Kabula ideas that excite us, and we'll share some of them in the Survey, so you can rate them. But we have not started developing them, as we want to do that while taking in consideration your overall feedback.
We are leaving this survey open for a couple of months: If you haven't played yet, no worries, you can still fill the rest. You can take your time to play the game and then get back to the survey again later :)
Click here for the SURVEY LINK. Thanks for filling it out!
If you have already played and feel ready to rate us/give a short review on BGG, let's make Frosthaven shake in fear!
Goodbye
This update was very long to write (and longer to draw!), thanks for taking the time to read it! Stay healthy and proud, have a great 2024!
We'll be back in about a month with the Survey results. We'll also share pics of minis painted from backers and we can have a look at what reviewers say about Kabula.
If you want to check at early content, here you have some links: