Glass Cannon Unplugged, a writer recognized for board recreation diversifications of video video games corresponding to Frostpunk, Dying Mild, and Apex Legends, has formidable plans for its subsequent crowdfunding undertaking. This time the Polish studio is tackling Klei Leisure’s breakout hit from the 2010s with Don’t Starve: The Board Game. However what does a roguelike survival recreation even seem like on the tabletop? Polygon not too long ago spoke with each groups of creatives about defining the board recreation’s relationship to the unique and exploring the mechanics that may assist convey this bodily object to life.
Don’t Starve is a multi-platform, third-person online game first revealed in 2013. In it, gamers tackle the position of a wild-haired scientist named Wilson who will get trapped in a dim, parallel dimension referred to as the Fixed. They discover weird landscapes; craft weapons, instruments, and constructions; and make meals in hopes of preserving Wilson alive and his sanity intact. Drawing from disparate influences corresponding to Minecraft and Tim Burton movies, the sport has a steep studying curve spiced with everlasting character dying. But it surely developed a rabid following nonetheless, thanks partially to a wealthy narrative layer.
Don’t Starve: The Board Recreation is a extremely modular design with many interlocking methods. Essentially the most fundamental is the map itself, which — like a lot of the sport belongings — will function authentic artwork created by Klei. Gamers will discover that map looking for sources, and finally try and flee from it within the recreation’s closing rounds. The present construct makes use of rectangular taking part in playing cards to signify totally different biomes, that are then laid out onto a hexagonal grid to create the map. The result’s a landmass with distinctive paths and chokepoints — the proper atmosphere for a tense exploration recreation.
Gamers management their characters from a sideboard, which tracks their well being, starvation, and sanity. Additionally they have a listing, which incorporates objects worn on the physique, objects held within the palms, and objects stuffed inside a small backpack. As within the online game, a lot of the gameplay revolves round scavenging biomes and combating monsters, all within the hope of amassing the sources wanted to finish ever extra advanced duties and recipes.
“The factor we wished to give attention to in Don’t Starve: The Board Recreation was really the sensation of exploration,” defined lead designer Rafał Pieczyński. “Going into the unknown, exploring the areas, having enjoyable with your mates as properly, however sharing slightly bit of information, slightly little bit of discovery [between] the playthroughs. With each single recreation you be taught one thing new, you go additional into the story, or [discover] the issues which may occur.”
![Black and red dice sit next to a player standee from Don’t Starve: The Board Game. They feature shields, slash marks, and purple flames.](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/HMX9MdBEN2xq4gh_LzFAhq6zLW4=/0x0:3840x2160/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:3840x2160):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25463300/dont_starve_the_board_game_render_dice_detail.jpg)
One in every of Pieczyński’s improvements on this undertaking is in combining each a linear marketing campaign and a collection of one-off eventualities. It’s not a legacy-style recreation, and nothing within the field is completely altered or destroyed. However there might be carry-over from recreation to recreation.
“It is possible for you to to play [it] as a marketing campaign recreation, or as a scenario-based recreation, or each on the similar time,” Pieczyński stated. “It’s fairly [a] distinctive assemble in that manner. And the development from the marketing campaign will probably be saved [between] playthroughs [allowing players to] have an effect on the world completely.”
In accordance with Glass Cannon CEO Jakub Wiśniewski, the tabletop adaptation started — as most board video games do — as an unthemed prototype. The system was constructed by a younger designer named Natanel Apfel, who’s now a visible results artist at Riot Video games. Apfel’s core design, in addition to the revisions carried out by the present lead designer Pieczyński, who took over the undertaking, finally gained out.
“Nate is an avid board recreation participant,” Wiśniewski stated. “He confirmed us a prototype, and we had been like, ‘Holy smoke, that is actually good survival! Perhaps we should always take into consideration one thing like this!’” Earlier than lengthy, the workforce reached out to 11 bit studios, who they’d labored with beforehand on This Battle of Mine: The Board Recreation. That studio, headquartered in Poland similar to Glass Cannon is, performed the nice neighbor and was in a position to dealer an introduction to Klei’s workforce in Canada.
“After we spoke,” Wiśniewski stated, “[Klei] had already rejected loads of prototypes, each internally and externally.”
“There was clearly loads of love and care put into how the sport each regarded and performed even within the early prototypes,” stated Corey Rollins, head of promoting at Klei. “Additionally they defined to us their course of for designing a tabletop recreation and it was similar to how Klei has been utilizing Early Entry as a core a part of our DNA. […] It appeared like a extra pure match to work with Glass Cannon.”
In a marketing campaign, gamers can carry over the sources, recipes, and even a number of the issues that they’ve constructed from recreation to recreation. Simply as within the online game, crafting choices will unlock and increase over time to supply new short-term objectives in addition to enabling the bigger narrative to unfold. However gamers should all the time pay shut consideration to these three core stats of well being, starvation, and sanity (they might not begin every recreation fairly as wholesome or sane as they may prefer to be).
![A series of white and yellow tokens next to a character standee, shown here with winding pigtails clutching a Teddy bear. A render of the early version of the board game.](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/eg4k26z75DJeGOJfdThY0rlhyXQ=/0x0:3840x2160/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:3840x2160):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25463324/dont_starve_the_board_game_render_crafting_items.jpg)
Like every good survival recreation, starvation could also be crucial stat of all. With a full abdomen, gamers will obtain extra Focus Tokens, which let you re-roll cube. Focus Tokens can flip the tide within the recreation’s dice-based fight.
All of which means that, like many different Glass Cannon tasks, Don’t Starve: The Board Recreation is a reasonably literal interpretation of the moment-to-moment motion discovered within the online game. That design ethos has been each a boon and a burden for this workforce prior to now. For example, in Polygon’s evaluate of This Battle of Mine: The Board Recreation, a title co-designed by Glass Canon’s CEO Wiśniewski, we famous that it was a fairly powerful promote for individuals who hadn’t already performed the unique — or for individuals who already owned the unique and will play that as an alternative. The identical might be stated of Frostpunk: The Board Recreation, though that title appears to have fared a lot better with customers.
Wiśniewski says that this time round his workforce is designing Don’t Starve: The Board Recreation with board avid gamers, not online game gamers, extra firmly in thoughts.
“Don’t Starve is such an unimaginable murals, as a result of the sport overlaps on so many ranges,” Wiśniewski stated. “Not solely the artwork, the music, but additionally the design, the story, the way it’s hidden, how they go about every peculiar element. Eliminating some elements would […] not do it sufficient justice. So we’d moderately have additional work on our facet pondering serve it on a extra digestible platter than minimize issues and lose them as we go.”
“The enjoyable factor for me is that lots of people which have seen the sport, they really feel prefer it’s a literal adaptation of the sport, nevertheless it’s superb that with all of the streamlined guidelines that the sport itself isn’t actually that tough to play,” Pieczyński stated.
Don’t Starve: The Board Game will come to Kickstarter for its preliminary spherical of funding this fall, with the present aim to ship the sport by the fourth quarter of 2025. The workforce additionally tells Polygon that at the very least seven languages will probably be out there at launch, together with English, German, French, Polish, Spanish, Italian, and Czech. Pricing has not but been decided.