Steamforged Games is crowd-sourcing funds to make a board game based on From Software's uber-popular action-RPG, Dark Souls. Within the span of just three minutes they managed to get funded. Even more than that, within the span of just 24 hours they managed to accrue $1 million in funding.
IGN is reporting that shortly after going live, the Dark Souls board game managed to rack in $458,599 USD. The crazy part about it is that the initial funding goal is only $70,832.
According to the Kickstarter page, the campaign was made to be simplified so that there were only two types of pledges: one for the gamers and one for the retail stores. There are two tiers for backing the board game, one at $106 and one at $113. The last pledging tier is for retail outlets only.
The simplified monetary structure for crowd-sourcing, plus the stunning figurines and board game layout, combined with the fact that this is Dark Souls made the campaign an instant winner. You can check out the pitch video below to get a look at the campaign.
One could say, if you're planning on making a Kickstarter based on a popular brand with permission of the rights holder, this is a decent model to use.
Steamforged managed to get the go-ahead from Bandai Namco to make the board game, and opted to create seven different board tiles, multiple effect tokens, three sets of multi-colored dice, multiple character boards, and a series of decks. Some of the decks include treasure cards, bosses and equipment decks.
The most impressive part about the Dark Souls board game is the fact that it has such an awesome collection of figurines to go with it. There are bosses from the original Dark Souls, Dark Souls II and Dark Souls III including Dragon Slayer Ornstein, the Execution Smough and the very ethereal Dancer of the Boreal Valley.
Player characters will have an option of four different classes, including the Knight, Warrior, Herald and Assassin. There are five different mini-bosses along with 16 grunt pieces.
The board game is packed to the rim with potential, and Steamforged Games has a reputable history of making high-quality board games and board game pieces, so this isn't a Kickstarter from a nameless company for an off-brand product.
At the time of writing this article, there are still 26 days to go for the Dark Souls board game. They've already managed a total of $1,021,601 across 8,000 backers, and you can join in if you want by heading to the Kickstarter page to pledge your support.
The board game is due for release sometime in April of 2017, so you'll have to wait a while to get your hands on it.
