Dark Souls boardgame kickstarter

Ah, ok, confirmed then. They really don't know what they're doing. Bullet dodged.

Yeah, in hindsight, breaking expansions into multiple SG unlocks, having a figure at one SG and its actual cards in another, etc. also showed that these guys don't get it as far as selling a board game product goes.

It's going to be interesting to watch this resolve...like when it takes 2-3 years for all of this stuff to actually release.

Yes, time and time again they swear up and down that they will meet their deadline. I would be amazed, to put it mildly.

They could do what other companies have done and deliver the Core game relatively on time (within 4-6 months of estimate) and then do a second wave later.

There's no way. There's very little development finished from either a product or a gameplay perspective. Are they really going to develop and play test all of these armor sets, invaders, NPCS, this "campaign mode" etc. concurrently with the base game mechanics AND develop all of this from packaging to sculpts to layouts in less than a year? And get it all approved by Bandai Namco, who apparently need a month to look at a video of content they've already seen?

The scope of this project and its timeline is something that even a company with resources like FFG or GE would struggle with. But they wouldn't over-promise or probably even attempt to launch so much product at once.

The whole defense/marketing line on this is literally "BUT IT IS DARK SOULS!"

Michael Barnes wrote: The whole defense/marketing line on this is literally "BUT IT IS DARK SOULS!"

Strangely, that seems to be enough. I wonder how much money they could have raised, if they had done a more professional, better prepared and more customer friendly campaign. Considering how many of you were uncertain about pledging or reduced your pledges, it might have made a considerable difference. Which seems kind of crazy, given that an established company like FFG had a revenue of $30 million in 2013 ( source ).

Michael Barnes wrote:
The scope of this project and its timeline is something that even a company with resources like FFG or GE would struggle with. But they wouldn't over-promise or probably even attempt to launch so much product at once.

I don't know -- I bet General Electric could swing it

I think the core ideas they're presenting from Dark Souls really could work in a boardgame---the die or return to bonfire and respawn risk/reward is an excellent idea. Facing looks good too and programmed moves to mimic the game... that's why they almost had me. But way too little finished info to buy anything and the kickstarter campaign is making me incredibly wary. Honestly, adding so many stretch goals and stuff made me less likely to join than I was at the beginning when the deal was "worse."

I hope it's great for the sake of the all the backers!

I kept going back and forth on my stance in relation to how extremely green Steamforged seemed to be with everything they were doing in this campaign. On the one hand, holy shit that is a lot of money dropping onto a relatively inexperienced team, at least when it comes to board games and such a high profile IP. On the other hand, I felt like Souls games themselves sort of originated under similar circumstances, with a group of people who seemingly came out of nowhere, or rather a time warp directly from the King's Field era, short-circuiting past a decade of RPG cruft from other designs and coming up with something almost alien but familiar. Maybe there's a little bit of a synergy there. They're certainly trying things that are a little outside of the lines, which will keep my attention as the project plods forward, but other parts of the design seem a little rote. And that massive bomb at the end of the campaign did not inspire confidence. I hope it turns out well and I'll definitely be checking up on the project periodically.

www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/1636556/dev...ew-renders-and-backe

So... not bubblegum quality but I'm not blown away. OTOH, been completely spoiled by Armada and new GW stuff. We're talking a completely different price range, of course.

Kind of glad I didn't back this. Will be interested to hear how the game plays most of all when the set is actually out and complete.

A friend of mine backed it so I'll get to play it shortly after it comes out. I'm really curious how it'll actually play.