Elden Ring is getting a board game adaptation from Steamforged Games, Bandai Namco’s serial board game adaptation partner, who was also behind the previous Dark Souls and Monster Hunter: World board games.
Steamforged announced in a press release on its website that the board game Elden Ring will be sold through a Kickstarter campaign. The announcement was accompanied by a render depicting a miniature of the infamous early game boss Margit, the Fell Omen.
“The characteristically challenging combat of the video game will be recreated with intelligent, diceless combat that requires players to strategize and adapt their plans during each encounter,” the statement said.
“Our mission has always been to create authentic tabletop adaptations that capture the essence of what fans know and love about the IP. Fans can expect a dark, richly realized tabletop world filled with mystery and danger, with satisfying combat and rewarding exploration. Prepare to spend hours on this game and enjoy it,” said Mat Hart, Co-Founder and Creative Director of Steamforged.
However, all of this doesn’t particularly describe what the game will be like. Diceless combat is much more promising as it is often the key to more functional, balanced, deterministic combat like we saw in Gloomhaven or even Into the Breach. I’m mostly interested in the idea of Steamforged trying to adapt or echo the open-world ethos of Elden Ring.
You can sign up for notifications about the Kickstarter campaign on the pre-launch page of the board game Elden Ring, there. However, the time interval before release is “months”.
Will it be a good board game? Well, that means it’s review time, but given Steamforged Games’ track record, it’s going to be a pretty okay game. The miniatures will likely be beautiful, as has been the case with all Steamforged adaptations so far.
In terms of rules? None of the adaptations of Steamforged have gotten beyond functional, into interesting, inspired, or truly great territory. They are functional, if overly complicated. However, the release of the Dark Souls RPG earlier this year was full of amateur errors and, frankly, was so weak that I wouldn’t recommend it even to fans of the series.
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