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The Big Squeeze Flips Lemonade Stands Into Apocalypse Survival

Imagine a sunny worker-placement game where everyone is running a competing lemonade stand, gathering lemons and sugar, mixing recipes for cash. Nice and cosy. Then the money runs out and the world literally flips over. Welcome to The Big Squeeze: Your Lemonade Stand vs. The Apocalypse, Wiggles 3D's new tabletop oddity, currently sitting at $47,424 (around £36,000) on BackerKit with 694 backers.

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Designed by AC Atienza and illustrated by Maximilian Gotthold and Cam Kendell, The Big Squeeze plays 1-4 in around an hour. The first phase has you building lemonade recipes, hiring helpers and chasing profit in the town of Rinddale. When the bank empties, the apocalypse triggers, the board flips physically, and Rinddale becomes Rindfall. Now your workers chase fame instead of cash, with forbidden recipes and bounty deliveries replacing the morning rush.

Wiggles 3D is the Canadian studio behind 5-Minute Dungeon, the chaotic real-time co-op card game that picked up a Spiel des Jahres recommendation in 2018 and remains a staple party-co-op pick. The Big Squeeze is a noticeably bigger ambition, leaning on a properly modular two-sided board and shifting strategies between halves.

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The campaign uses backer-count stretch goals rather than funding ones, so each new milestone unlocks a fresh playable character for everyone. Pledges start at $39 (£29) for the base game, $49 (£37) for the Launch Edition with the Cosmic Ingredients mini-expansion, or $69 (£52) for the Small Batch Collector's Edition with 200-plus wooden tokens. Fulfilment is targeted for February 2027.

The campaign closes 2 June 2026. If your group enjoys games that pivot mid-play (think Pandemic Legacy reveals or Daybreak's escalating crises), this looks like one to watch. According to GeekDad's prototype review, the apocalypse-flip works exactly as advertised, with characters showing visible growth across the divide.


Sources: BackerKit | GeekDad | Wiggles 3D

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