Machine of Death: The Game of Creative Assassination

Just when I think games have been completely overshadowed by Breaking Bad viewing parties and orgies as the most popular indoor group activities, Kickstarter projects like Machine of Death: The Game of Creative Assassination come along. It's hard for me to describe exactly what this card-based means of entertainment is--mostly because the campaign's description is the approximate length of my cousin Toby's doctoral dissertation on myostatin blockage in the double muscled Belgian blue bull--so I'll let its creators, David Malki and Kris Straub, give you the one-line rundown: Machine of Death is a party game in which it is totally possible to drop a boxcar full of rabid piranhas onto the King of France. Likely, even.

When the metaphorical Machine of Death issues cards containing death predictions for certain (fictional, sorry) individuals, it becomes each player's mission to complete their assigned assassination in the most stealth and clever way they can. In addition to a death card, players receive gift cards with random details that must be incorporated into their planned attack. Various modes of play can ensue, including head-to-head, co-op, mission, and chief, all for varying numbers of players and strategic styles. Head-to-head, perhaps the most straightforward mode, functions similarly to Apples to Apples, wherein one player is assigned to be the Chief, and make a ruling on whose assassination attempt is most successful.

The short of it is that Machine of Death will enable you to fling sharks from catapults and create a quicksand generator in a treehouse in order to drown a child. I also copied that line from the Machine of Death Kickstarter page. I'm not open-minded enough to have such outlandish lines of thought.

Funding for copies of the savvy killer cards and complete (hopefully less dissertation-y) instructions for play continues through March 19, 2013, with anticipated delivery not too long thereafter--August 2013. Machine of Death the game is based on Machine of Death the book, the latter of which was an Amazon bestseller exploring what life would be like if an infallible machine really could tell us how we're going to die. Sometimes I think gorging on ice cream wouldn't be that bad, but then I remember the gluttony scene from Seven.

Suggested via Dude Product Tips by Ryan. Thanks, Ryan.

November 2013 Update: Machine of Death well exceeded its crowdfunding goal and is now available for direct purchase through the company's website--follow the link below.