“As Dark Souls fans, we could not be more excited to be given the honour of developing a board game that embraces everything that makes Dark Souls the deep, compelling game experience that it is,” the company said in its announcement blog post.
The company said it will work with Bandai Namco on the game, which will be set in the “Dark Souls universe.” In other words, the game may not have a narrative that ties directly to any of the Souls video games. Coincidentally, the campaign comes a month after another board game maker, Eric Lang, announced he was making a Sony-approved tabletop card game for Dark Souls‘ sister franchise, Bloodborne.
The Dark Souls game will be Steamforged Games’ second crowdfunding-based board game project. It’s first, the medieval football tabletop game Guild Ball, raised £93,000, more than triple its initial funding goal. The game was named “most innovative” at the 2015 Crisis Belgium tabletop convention.
Meanwhile, after teasing some “big news” on Twitter earlier in the week, Bandai Namco Europe launched a new, official Dark Souls clothing line in its online store Friday. The hype for the announcement — which may have left fans expecting gameplay related news — as well as the designs themselves, have left fans and pundits underwhelmed.
This is actual official Dark Souls merch: a bad clone of an Olly Moss design stuffed with awful memes pic.twitter.com/oydGENSWvf
— Michael McWhertor (@MikeMcWhertor) April 8, 2016
Dark Souls III comes out in North America, South America, and Europe April 12; if you’re into Dark Souls and board games, you might want to keep an eye on Kickstarter next week as well.
