Dark Souls board game smashes Kickstarter goal, raises over £3.7-mllion [update]

Update, 17 May 2016: The project concluded on 16 May with over £3.7-million (R83-million) in funding.

Update, 6 May 2016: The game has reached over £2.1-million (R45.9-million) in funding.

Update, 26 April 2016: The game has reached over £1.5-million (R31.6-million) in funding.

Update, 21 April 2016: The game has reached over £1 000 000 (R21-million) in funding.

Update, 21 April 2016: The game has reached over £900 000 (R18.9-million) in funding.

From Software’s Dark Souls, the video game series known for being brutal, is getting its own board game. The game’s Kickstarter page went up on 19 April and was fully funded in a whopping three minutes.

To put things into perspective, the publishers, Steamforged Games Ltd, were asking for £50 000 (R102 000) to fund the project. As of writing, the funding total is sitting at £426 625 (over R870 000) £3 771 474 (over R85 105 028). Looking at the project’s current Stretch Goals, of which the highest is £90 000, the team didn’t seem to think they’d receive this much funding.

Dark Souls – The Board Game is billed as a “strategically challenging, deeply immersive combat exploration game for 1-4 players.”

It is playable in either solo or co-op modes, with the game scaling to accommodate different amounts of players.

Much like the video game, this board game version “rewards clever players and punishes ‘button mashing’.” It might not be a game for everyone.

So far, the core game comes with a range of figures, playing board tiles, tokens, character boards, as well as different decks for play. It’s standard fare for a dungeon-crawler-type board game.

The full list of components:

• 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

To try and make things simple, the Kickstarter consists of one pledge level for general consumers, and one pledge level for retailers, which allows them to purchase stock.

The publishers have stated that more stretch goals will soon be added to the Kickstarter page.

There is a note at the bottom of the campaign stating: “Products presented on this Kickstarter page and during the campaign may be subject to change in order to meet the expectations of the BANDAI NAMCO ENTERTAINMENT S.A.S. licence agreement.”

There are 26 days left to go on this project. It looks to ship out to customers in April 2017.