Steamforged Games, publishers of Horizon Zero Dawn™: The Board Game and Dark Souls™: The Board Game (among many others), just announced a new tabletop project coming to Kickstarter this November 2020. Bardsung, a fantasy dungeon exploring game, aims to combine the versatility and player agency of a tabletop roleplaying game with the ease of use of a board game, as players seek glory in the face of great peril.
The game will be cooperative, with players taking on different characters to tackle beasts in dungeons in an effort to become worthy of the songs of bards (hence the title). Each session will be modular, with the dungeon terrain and dangerous encounters generated on the fly. Players will also lay tiles to build out the dungeon, and draw cards which can alter the narrative as they're progressing through it. With both single-session and campaign play, Bardsung allows players to grow the attributes of their characters and continue to develop as they go forward.
As lead designer Mat Hart describes in the press release:
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.
Bardsung is designed for one to five players, with an average play time between 45-60 minutes. We'll know more about the game as it gets closer to its November Kickstarter launch, but it's been a while since we've seen an exciting new tabletop RPG/board game hybrid like this, so we'll be keeping a close eye.
What do you think of Bardsung on first impression? Is this the type of game that keeps you coming back to Kickstarter? Let us know in the comments.
