Kickstarter in the recent past has been a hot destination when it comes to raising funds for boards/cards games, be it Elan Lee, Shane Small and Matthew Inman’s Exploding Kittens or Cyanide and Happiness’s Joking Hazard. So it came as no surprise that on Wednesday a new board game showed up on the crowd funding website in the form of the popular Bandai Namco franchise Dark Souls. The officially licensed tabletop game titled The Dark Souls – The Board Game had a funding goal of £50,000 (Rs 47 lacs) which it reached in three minutes. Popularity does help.
The tabletop is designed by Steamforged Games and licensed by Bandai Namco, it adapts the strategic dungeon crawling and the fast, deadly combat of Namco Bandai’s video games. The game’s official Kickstarter page describes the game as more than a classic dungeon crawler, and specifically designed for the Dark Souls video games universe. Like its video game, this one requires strategic thinking, clever planning, and exemplary execution to succeed.
Playable in either solo or co-op modes, players choose their role from a number of core Dark Souls character classes. Each class has a distinct role to play in the game, with a unique set of strengths and abilities.
With multiple difficulty modes and a high level of re-playability, this is a game designed to be deep enough to satisfy hard-core tabletop gamers whilst remaining accessible to newer players.
While the cheaper early bird tier is gone, hack-and-slashers can still pledge £80 (around Rs 7623) for a copy of the game and included stretch goal rewards. Given that it’s at the time of writing received over £535,000 ( a little over Rs 5 crore) in pledges, expect many stretch goals that the developers may come out.
Developers announced extra add-ons that will unlock as the campaign progresses. But these add-ons will require extra money from the pledgers and can be purchased just by increasing the pledge amount after the Kickstarter campaign ends. The add-ons are as follows: When the campaign touched £120,000 Gaping Dragon was unlocked, at £320,000 Black Dragon Kalameet, The Guardian Dragon at £525,000 and lastly at £1,000,000 The Four Kings. The developers have already reached the third milestone and with 26 days still remaining on the campaign, the final unlock too seems possible.
The Dark Souls – The Board Game came just after the recently released game Dark Souls III which hit the stores on 12 April and Bandai Namco said that it was the fastest selling game for the publisher.