Dark Souls: The Board Game Kickstarter

Steamforged Games hat ihren „Dark Souls The Board Game“ Kickstarter gestartet und wurde auch schon gefundet.

Dark Souls™ – The Board Game is a strategically challenging, deeply immersive combat exploration game for 1-4 players set in the Dark Souls™ universe. Players choose from a number of core character classes and explore dangerous locations full of monsters, treasures, and deadly boss fights.

Designed specifically for the Dark Souls™ universe and introducing a number of innovative gameplay mechanics, with world-class miniatures faithful to the rich universe, this game delivers an experience that captures the very essence of the original video games.

We don’t like complicated Kickstarters, so we’ve made this one as simple as possible. There is just one pledge level for gamers, and one pledge for retail stores.

As the campaign progresses, some stretch goals will unlock an ‘Add-On’ which is an optional item to purchase; to buy one of these, simply increase your pledge amount. This also drives the campaign total up thereby unlocking even more stuff!

The best bit is that every ‚non Add-On‘ stretch goal that gets unlocked during the campaign will be included in your pledge! So the more people that support the project, the more goals get unlocked, the more value we can squeeze in, and the bigger the box we’re going to need!

Dark Souls™ – The Board Game is much more than a classic dungeon crawler. Just like the Dark Souls™ video games, this is a game that requires strategic thinking, clever planning, and exemplary execution to succeed.

To triumph, players must explore dangerous locations, discover and defeat enemies, and collect equipment and treasures before ultimately facing the boss in an epic fight to the death.

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 replayability, this is a game designed to be deep enough to satisfy hard-core tabletop gamers whilst remaining accessible to newer players.

Dark Souls™ – The Board Game features an exciting „fast setup, long reveal“ mechanic that gets you into the game faster and builds the location and encounters as you explore.

With no fixed scenario layouts, it’s as simple as choosing the direction to explore, placing a new tile down and flipping a card from the Encounter deck.

Each time you decide where to go, you will experience a new danger as you explore, with each new location a real risk to your hard-won progress. If you die, then you drop everything you have collected and reappear at the nearest bonfire. So do you return to the bonfire to rest and spend Souls to strengthen up, but in doing so fully reset the locations? Or do you press on and pray that the next encounter isn’t beyond your capabilities? After all, the next location may contain a clue to the Boss and how to defeat them…

Combat is both fast and deadly. Dark Souls™ – The Board Game rewards clever players and punishes ‘button mashing’. Players must learn enemy behaviors in order to fight more effectively, with classic fighting game style combat windows.

The game features a “dynamic positioning system” which makes combat fluid and ever-changing. With the game state constantly shifting as combatants move around the battlefield, players must stay alert to danger and opportunities.

Equipment, armour, and weapons are discovered or earned during play, but with limited slots players must think carefully about what is best to keep and use. Using a simple stamina management system, players can potentially leave themselves exhausted and vulnerable. Death is usually swift to follow a poor decision in combat.

Using our advanced miniatures development pipeline and working with one of the finest board game manufacturers in the world, the quality and detail in the miniatures is world-class. With the entirety of the Dark Souls™ universe available to use, one of the hardest decisions has been to narrow down which enemies and bosses to include in the core game.

The Core Game contains:

• 3 Boss Models
• 5 Mini-Boss Models
• 4 Player Character Models
• 4 Large Grunt Models
• 12 Grunt Models
• 7 Double Sided Game Tiles
• 4 Player Character Boards
• 3 Boss Dials for Tracking Damage
• 60 Equipment Cards
• 40 Treasure Cards
• 26 Boss AI Cards
• 36 Encounter Cards
• 15 Coloured Dice
• 100+ Game Tokens

Check out the prototype Boss Fight versus the Dancer of the Boreal Valley and people’s reactions to it…

Add-Ons will unlock as the campaign progresses. To purchase these Add-Ons simply increase your pledge amount by the amount stated – after the Kickstarter campaign ends you will then be able to select your options via our pledge management system.

„Yep, Steamforged games is indeed working on a Dark Souls board game“ „Oh, and it totally has Ornstein & Smough figures“ – Destructoid

„Steamforged Games‘ official tabletop game based on Dark Souls will adopt the series‘ notorious level of difficulty, according to the board game maker.“ – Polygon

„Get your wallets ready, because there’s a Dark Souls board game coming to Kickstarter later this month. And naturally it’s going to be the toughest board game you’ve ever played“ – Digital Spy

„Steamforged has had experience with Kickstarter in the past. The tabletop maker held a campaign for its medieval football game, Guild Ball. The campaign was successful; it exceeded its £30,000 ($42,352.50) goal, raising a total of £93,691 ($132,268.27).“ – Gamespot

„Dark Souls is an exceptionally good video game series, but can it work as a board game? It looks like we’ll have the opportunity to find out soon, because board game company Steamforged Games is planning to make one, with the blessing of Dark Souls publisher Bandai Namco.“ – PCGamer

„There’s going to be a Dark Souls board game. It’s being made Steamforged Games who most recently made Guild Ball, a tabletop fantasy medieval football game. So yeah, perfect background to make a Dark Souls board game, right?“ – Kotaku

„if you’re looking for even more Souls in your life, you’re in luck.“ – Game Informer

„this is certainly something to watch out for.“ – Tech Times

„If you’re a fan of Dark Souls, and you want to share the experience with your friends outside the game, an upcoming Kickstarter may be of interest to you.“ – The Escapist

„If you haven’t had enough ways to die in Dark Souls games, then you may want to consider getting your virtual wallet ready to support an upcoming tabletop endeavor for the franchise.“ – Shack News

We know the challenges retail faces with Kickstarter projects. This project is our first step towards changing this for the retailers.

Steamforged Games Ltd are determined to support retail at every level. With our previous project – Guild Ball, we committed that after the project had launched all further products within the range would be direct to retail. We kept that promise. With Dark Souls™ – we go one step further and are building support directly into the Kickstarter itself.

The Retailer Pledge level contains 6 copies of the Core Boxset: Dark Souls™ – The Board Game along with a number of other benefits:

Retailer Bonus Unlocks – We have built into the Kickstarter several additional retailer bonus unlocks that once unlocked will provide ‚Add-On‘ purchases available only at retail and not purchasable during the Kickstarter by backers. These will not be limited runs but a general release available to all customers upon launch of the game in shops.

Exclusive Timed Access – You will be the first stores to receive the Core Game and the only stores to have 4 weeks early access to the launch day products and retailer exclusive stretch goal products upon release.

Exclusive Point of Sale Items – Along with your retail stock, we will send exclusive point of sale items as a thank you for supporting us from the start.

To help retailers guarantee their initial stock, you may purchase additional Retailer Pledges by increasing the pledge amount.

We will be supporting localisation options for the game and have confirmed the following languages currently: French and German.

We are also considering other localisation options depending on demand during and after the Kickstarter campaign ends. You will be able to choose the language of your version via the pledge manager system.

Shipping will be charged after the Kickstarter finishes based on actual costs incurred to ship and is collected via our pledge manager system. This allows us to charge fairly for all backers and avoid a ‚one size fits all‘ mentality to shipping.

We will ship your pledges to several hubs around the world at our cost. Your pledge will arrive via one of the following hubs:

• United Kingdom (UK and Rest of the World backers)
• USA (US backers)
• Canada (Canadian backers)
• Germany (EU backers)
• China (Asia Pacific backers)
• Australia (Australia and New Zealand backers)

Below are our initial rough estimates for shipping the core game (4kg volumetric weight). These are just estimates – costs may rise due to weight increase as more items are unlocked via stretch goals and add-on purchases you choose.

• UNITED KINGDOM: £7
• USA: £7-£11 to most states. £22 to Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico.
• CANADA: £7-£15 to most cities.
• EUROPE: £7 to Germany.
• £10-£22 to most other countries.
• £25 to Norway, Finland, Estland, Lettland, and Latvia.
• £30 to Bosnia/Herzegowina, Croatia, and Serbia.
• £40 to Bulgaria, Lithuania, and Romania.
• £43 to Iceland, Russia, and Israel.
• £50 to Greece, Turkey, and Ukraine.
• LATIN AMERICA: £35-£43 to most countries.
• ASIA: £7 to China and Hong Kong. £22 to most other countries (no estimate available for Malaysia).
• OCEANIA: £9-£18 to Australia. £22 to New Zealand.
• AFRICA: £50 to most countries.

Any pledges confirmed after our pledge manager deadline window will be shipped from the UK hub at a later date and will likely incur increased shipping costs.

Below is the general schedule once the Kickstarter ends so you know when to expect money to be taken and our overall shipping plan – again these are estimates:

Kickstarter Campaign Ends

• 0 Day – Pledges are charged.
• 1 Week – Survey sent confirming emails.
• 1-2 Months – Pledge Manager sent to backers confirming add-on purchases, extras and taking payment for shipping.
• 1 Month Before Shipping – Pledge Manager deadline – any late confirmations after this deadline will be shipped from the UK after all other pledges are completed and may incur additional cost.

Shipping Starts

• 0 Day – China starts packing EU/AUS/US hub orders. UK/RoW orders are sent to the UK hub by sea freight.
• 2-5 Weeks – China sends EU/AUS/US hub orders prepacked by sea freight. Asian hub orders begin packing and shipping.
• 6-8 Weeks – UK hub receives items and begins packing and shipping
• 9-12 Weeks – EU/AUS/US hubs receive items, ship everything out to backers within 2 weeks.
• 13+ Weeks – UK hub completes shipping of the UK and RoW orders. Late confirmation orders and customer service requests for missing/broken items dealt with via support@steamforged.com

 

Quelle: Dark Souls The Board Game Kickstarter