Whoa that’s a lot of text, whats the short version?
Boardgame that is often described as Dark Souls+Monster Hunter, with the city-building elements of Civilization that was on kickstarter. Fully funded in an hour, 300% funded the first day, and more then 5000% funded at just over 2 million dollars by the end of the campaign.
Kingdom Death: Monsters is a kickstarted cooperative miniatures game where players take on the role of a primitive settlement of humans who go out to hunt horrific monsters for hides/bones/organs, and use them to construct new weapons, armor, and to upgrade their settlement. It is scheduled to be released later this year.
A pair of gameplay videos made by the creator can be found here [x] [x]. The first one is an example of fighting a monster and collecting resources, and the second is an example of building up your settlement as well as customizing your gear and hunting down a new monster to fight. Warning: Hilarious vocal explosion sound effects.
The game is for 1-4 players working together to try and take on a monster controlled by a semi-randomized deck of cards that controls what the monster does each turn, with each monster having its own unique deck, in 3 separate difficulties. Damage is done by removing cards from that deck, making certain attacks unusable by that enemy. Once all the cards are removed, you defeat the monster and may gain resources. Each monster has unique resources to give, as well as 3 generic resources that all monsters give, Organs, Bone, and Hide.
Upon returning to the settlement, an event happens, which may be either positive, such as gaining additional survivors, or negative, such as a monster attacking the settlement. The event on the first turn of the game (The First Day event) is a special event which tells you how to build the Event deck, the Innovation deck, and which Settlement Locations you start with, as well as determining your settlement population. Some expansions offer different First Day cards, to change up the start conditions of the game a bit. After resolving the event, the players may use the resources they have gathered to create new weapons and armor, build new settlement locations, or by spending 1 of each of the basic resources, may research a new innovation. Any time an innovation is researched, players rebuild the event and innovation decks to account for the new technology.
After the settlement phase, players once again set out on a hunt, choosing which monsters to hunt, and what difficulty to fight it at, however if a Nemesis Monster attacked the village, the players will to face that, instead of being able to choose. After that they advance through a series of events which involve finding additional resources, preparing themselves for battle, and encountering random events and possible monster ambushes. Each monster has its own unique Hunt events, in addition to hunt events that may happen at any time. This phase also determines whether the player, or the monster goes first once they enter combat.
The game has multiple planned expansions, divided into two categories: Major, and Minor expansions. The minor expansions add an additional monster to fight, as well as new innovations, events, and gear. Meanwhile the Major expansions add those, and also extra armor sets, new settlement locations, and also expand the campaign. There is also the Lantern Festival expansions, which adds multiple monsters and acts as a sequel/post-game to the core sets story, with its contents only coming into play after playing through the default campaign.
The game is expected to be out in the second quarter of this year, at the latest. It is also expected to have quite a lot of content, with the games box being 24”x12”, weighing 10 lbs, and costing $200 for those who didn’t back the kickstarter. This blog will be posting Kingdom Death content, starting with reposting the old kickstarter updates. Please feel free to send any questions about the game to this blog.
