The developers of the cult hit 4x Sword of the Stars, Kerberos Productions, are making a foray into board games, bringing their roguelike SotS spinoff The Pit to the tabletop. Launched today on Kickstarter, The Pit: The Board Game is a cooperative dungeon crawl for 1-4 players.
If you’re not familiar, players in The Pit are cute little space warriors plumbing the depths of a secret laboratory filled with alien horrors. They’re trying to save their planet, or something, but what they really do is get eaten, gather loot, and run out of things to eat themselves. (Shortly before starving.) Kerberos says the project is print-ready upon funding, and have already received bids from printers and planned for fulfillment.
First released in 2015, Sword of the Stars: The Pit was a relatively well-regarded and much-expanded-upon adaptation of the 4x’s campy sci-fi world into a roguelike. The Pit: The Board Game looks like it differs from the video game in a few key ways. First, it’s a gridless dungeon crawl game, using more abstract room cards and corridors to replicate the roguelike experience. Otherwise, it’s what you’d expect: You roll dice, you kill monsters, you get loot, you die, you try again. For those more curious, the game’s beta rulebook is linked from the Kickstarter campaign. In a small twist, but surely welcome to some, the campaign has backer tiers where gamers with 3D printers can get the files needed to print a theoretically-unlimited number of little alien blobs and space marines.
Those curious can visit the Kickstarter or the game's official website.
