Steamforged Games launched its Kickstarter campaign for Dark Souls: The Board Game today. Promising to offer a tabletop experience that is faithful to the RPG franchise, Steamforged quickly reached their fundraising goal. It took just three minutes for the Kickstarter to reach its £50,000 goal, with more than 2,500 backers contributing.
Now we have an idea how Dark Souls will work as a board game.
Dark Souls: The Board Game will be a cooperative game for 1-4 players. According to Steamforged, the game will focus on “strategically challenging, deeply immersive combat exploration.” Players will take on the role of one of four characters based on starting classes from the games. Players will fight monsters, find treasure, and battle bosses.
Dark Souls: The Board Game will include enemies from the three Dark Souls games. The game will come with two boss encounters: Ornstein and Smough from Dark Souls, and Dancer of the Boreal Valley from Dark Souls 3.
Steamforged released a YouTube video showing how boss battles will work (seen below). Boss character’s movements and attacks will be governed by “AI cards.” Since players will only have to contend with a handful of card-controlled commands during the fight, they will be able to learn how those encounters unfold, adapt, and take down the boss. It will not be simple. Players will have to be aware of their stamina, hit points, and position as they play.
A lot will come in the box. In addition to three boss characters, there will be five mini-boss miniatures (Gargoyle, Titanite Demon, Frost Knight, Invader, and Winged Knight), 16 grunts, seven game tiles, 100 treasure and equipment cards, 15 dice, and more than 100 tokens. All this content will come at a price. Pledges of £80 will fetch a copy of the base game. Steamforged will sell add-ons at an additional price.
Dark Souls: The Board Game will release in April 2017. You can check out the game’s Kickstarter page for more information.