Dark Souls at Salute

Last weekend I attended Salute 2016 with Marquee Models, as part of their boardgames demo team. I helped demo Zombicide Black Plague all day, but I did manage to sneak away from the table to make a few small purchases and try out Dark Souls.

The boardgame has been created by Steamforged Games Ltd, who have been working with Bandai Namco Entertainment to emulate the experience of the popular video game. I have not played the video game before, I am more of a Cake Mania or Katamari kind of a girl. The people around me playing the demo had played before, though, and they agreed that the boardgame captured the essence of the video game well, especially in the form of combat and the brutally hard nature of the game.

We played a quick demo of the game, jumping in at the deep end and confronting an end of level boss character; the dancer. It is a cooperative game (which is good as you need the back-up!) where you embark upon a perilous a dungeon exploration. Players take it in turn to move and attack. Each action you make depletes your stamina, which is shown on a nifty character card. You use a dry wipe pen to mark off the actions taken and to mark off your health when you are attacked. The stamina is on the left side of the card, and the health is on the right, but if they are all crossed off then you die! Luckily you can replenish health by drinking from your limited Estus Flask or replenish stamina by resting, so timing is a key element for survival.

The boss character we fought was controlled by a small deck of cards, all showing the boss's attack, movement, damage and where she will be vulnerable to attacks. These cards are reset once used up, and recycled, remaining in the same sequence so it is easier to predict the boss's actions. When the health was down to halfway on the boss things got crazy, an extra powerful card was added to the deck and it was shuffled to mess things up! I died fairly soon after that, and had to run back to my demo table before they sent out a search party. 

The kickstarter campaign for Dark Souls is launching today, you can check it out here.

Thanks for reading!

Marisa xx