Steamforged is going full steam ahead if you’ll allow me to use the obvious comment. I mean, it’s hard not to imagine powerful engines, churning, hefting and driving forward given the British publishers throughout and success.
They’ve found success with the Dark Souls board game, Critical Role minis, the Horizon Zero Dawn board game and more recently the Animal Adventures RPG.
Today, they’ve announced another project, and it is entirely their own invention. Popular intellectual property is what turns good publishers into great ones.
The game is called Bardsung, can be played in about 45 to 60 minutes and needs between 1 and 5 players. That’s right; you can solo this.
In fact, Bardsung may be particularly attractive to people looking for an RPG like experience as terrain and encounters are procedurally generated.
Player agency is important too, with the decisions people make either in a solo-game or through a cooperative playthrough, interact with the procedural generation and literally change the hero’s path through the dungeon.
Bardsung was designed by Mat Hart (Resident Evil 2, Dark Souls) who told press;
We’ve looked to combine a full-strength RPG system with the visual appeal and ease of use of a board game, offering players a huge amount of agency and choice not just over in-game actions, but also over developing their character’s abilities and attributes.
Steamforge has revealed that Bardsung can be used for one-shot plays and has a campaign mode too.
Hart added;
So you want to play a thief with a little bit of cleric mixed in? You can. Want to play a fighter with access to powerful magic spells? You can. Want to dig into the hundreds of combinations of abilities to discover amazingly powerful combos to pull off at the table? You can!
Because of the deep roleplaying/board game format, this is a game that will feel fun, engaging, and very compelling whether you’re into pen and paper RPGs, RPG video games, or dungeon crawl board games.
The development team includes Sherwin Matthews (Resident Evil 2), Richard August and Fraser McFetridge (Godtear). The Kickstarter is scheduled for this November.
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