BLOODBORNE: THE BOARD GAME

Welcome home, good hunter

For the fans of Souls video game series, the experience of their beloved game transformation into the physical format of board games has been a bit of a rollercoaster ride. The anticipation of the Dark Souls: The Board Game was sky high and it came crashing down. The following smaller card games based on both Dark Souls and Bloodborne have been fine, good even, but they could never compete with the expectations of a miniatures heavy big box game.

The announcement of the

Bloodborne: The Board Game dared fans to dream once again, and all signs were hopeful, including it being delivered by a different publisher to

Dark Souls: The Board Game. And, having tested the murky Yharnam waters with the card game, Eric Lang returned to design the board game joined by his co-designer on the A Song of Ice and Fire: Tabletop Miniatures Game, Michael Shinall.

Now it is safe to take a collective sigh of relief because Bloodborne: The Board Game is everything a

Souls series fan would want. Even a complete newcomer to the series

CMON

might find the calling of the hunt appealing. Besides fast-paced parrying, relentless combat and Lovecraftian themes, Bloodborne is known to be a bit obtuse where its story and lore are concerned. Yet the board game does a really good job of retelling the story, which is both easy to absorb, but at the same time is entirely in-keeping with the spirit of the universe. Arguably, the board game is more newcomer-friendly than the original video game ever was.

Yet, newcomer-friendly by no means equates to being easy. In fact, you will be debating every move in the game, weighing your decisions as you place and explore location tiles and any enemy encounter could easily lead to an early demise. There is no rolling of the dice or counting stats, almost every action in Bloodborne is done through card play. This makes every card in your hand a precious, finite resource, while every move made has a consequence. You may want to open a treasure chest but will you have enough cards afterwards to fend off an attack from the Scourge Beast? 45-75m 1-4 14+ £99

With almost every element of luck removed, the combat is heightened too. Although it is a simple numbers game, the speed of an attack plays an important part, especially if you can kill an enemy faster than they can activate their special move. Light deckbuilding will allow players to augment their decks to become better at dodging, hit harder or potentially cycle through their deck faster.

While Dark Souls: The Board Game could feel like a slog, especially with all of its grindy fights before you face the big boss, Bloodborne: The Board Game is gripping throughout because of the story integration into the gameplay. The base game comes with four separate campaigns, during which players, not unlike in legacy games, will make decisions that will result in consequences down the line. So, if at first you don’t succeed, you can try the campaign again and make very different decisions that that will lead to new outcomes.

The rulebook is the only element of

Bloodborne that brings it down. It has all information you need, but written in an ambiguous enough manner that you cannot help but question your interpretation of it every step of the way. Bloodborne’s gameplay is so tight and thought-through that getting even a little thing wrong can make an already challenging game, soulcrushingly hard.

Otherwise, Bloodborne is hard for all the good reasons. It is a rare case, where the board game does not seek to completely replicate its video game counterpart. It understands the spirit and the ethos of the game, delivering the experience that is eerily

Bloodborne but is also all its own.

PLAY IT?

❚ YES

It is the board game the fans have been waiting for, but Bloodborne: The Board Game can be anyone’s first Souls game as well. It is relentlessly brutal and hauntingly beautiful, but the high of the win in Bloodborne makes every tough fight absolutely worth it.

WHAT’S IN THE BOX?

◗ 4 Hunter minis

◗ 4 Hunter bases

◗ 28 Enemy minis

◗ 5 Boss minis

◗ 1 Hunt board

◗ 20 Map tiles

◗ 4 Double-sided trick

weapon dashboards

◗ 4 Hunter

dashboards

◗ 11 Firearm cards

◗ 48 Base stat cards

◗ 60 Upgrade cards

◗ 36 Consumable

cards

◗ 25 Reward cards

◗ 14 Enemy cards

◗ 6 Enemy action

cards

◗ 50 Boss action

cards

◗ 5 Boss HP cards

◗ 250 Campaign

cards

◗ 109 Tokens

TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED BLOODBORNE: THE CARD GAME

If you enjoyed Eric Lang’s previous venture in the Bloodborne universe, then this miniature-filled instalment will not disappoint.

Matched.com, Plenty of Fish, and of course: Tinder, these dating apps focus on trying to put together two compatible humans and sending them off into the world on dates with varying degrees of success. Of course, if you watched The Hobbit and debated the best way to catch the eye of Smaug, your dating app options are pretty limited. Enter: Cindr, a ‘cantrip app’ that you can cast to get playing the dragon dating game.

Cindr is a push your luck dice game that shares a lot of design inspiration from its rhyming partner, except the images are (arguably) more magical and fantastical than you may find elsewhere. I can only imagine the designers sat down one day to discuss how much fun could be had by scrolling through Tindr, followed up by a story of how a D&D game player tried to convince the DM to allow them to seduce the dragon, and ran with the two ideas. Surprisingly, it works pretty well.

You’ll build your own profile, creating a character with specific personality traits. The game has a lot of nods to D&D, and it’s fun

Smirk & Laughter Games

WHAT’S IN THE BOX?

◗ 12 Character

Profile Cards

◗ 24 Cindr App

Dragon Profile Cards

◗ 14 Whelp App

Location Cards

◗ 18 Second

Chances Cards

◗ 12 Dice to actually make the most of the character given, building them into someone. The game seems to shine most when this aspect is embraced, as it adds in a narrative – it’s fun to create a Strahd-esque character in the vampire-like profile: Likes Bats, dislikes Garlic. You’ll fill in that, plus names, pronouns, and compatibility features, such as whether you are a hoarder, investor, or spender when it comes to treasure.

Then it’s on to finding your match, where you’ll draw cards to see who crops up on your Dragon Cindr app, selecting them based on their description, or choosing to swipe left if they don’t seem suitable. If you like the look of one, you might take them on a date, which are drawn from a dating card stack. This might see you at The Undermountain exploring, binge watching your choice of film, or at The Celestial Palace for a spa day. How successful your date is depends on firstly, whether your compatibility choices match with

It may have first released almost two decades ago, but even now Dragonland does not feel dated. A Renier Knizia game, it seems, remains feeling fresh even many years later and even if you may have played a variation of this design several times over. This time, players venture into the volcanic lands of dragons, looking for treasure and precious dragon eggs to collect. The choice of what to do is simple: roll the dice, move your pawns and if you find yourself atop of a volcano pick up some treasure.

Unlike many other move-pawnalong-the-track games, Dragonland does not simply let its players be ruled by the luck of the roll. There are plenty of decisions to be made each turn and seemingly small rules have a large impact on the overall gameplay. For example, the track is not linear, and players can move their three pawns each turn based on the rolls in whichever direction they wish to, including cutting off their opponents and stealing gems right under their noses. In fact, a race to a particularly large volcano may be a good strategy. Yet, even if you don’t come first, you will never walk away with nothing. While having a lot of gems certainly moves a player up on the victory track, collecting sets of gems of unique colours brings significantly more points at the end of the game. The special power tokens also should not be underestimated as their abilities allow players to manipulate actions and movement, making the game so much more exciting than travelling on a predetermined track.

The latest release of Dragonland, sports updated components and a fresh coat of paint on the artwork. The drawing style became cutesier, starting from the dragon on the cover down to the rainbow unicorn tokens, which are only too reminiscent of my little pony. While this is clearly a family game, this new, arguably, younger-looking art, can also feel a little too focused on the style, losing some of the practical clarity of the original. For example, on the board it is not always clear which paths lead to which volcanoes as the artworks fight for space with each other, almost merging together.

Dragonland also includes a dice tower – not an essential part of the game and so a lovely surprise when you unpack the game. Unfortunately, we have been spoiled by the thoughtful design and detail of Wingspan’s dice tower, fashioned in the liking of the birdhouse. Any other games now, whether it likes it or not, will be measured against a