A massive game board inspired by the original NES classic, 11 characters with upgrade-able weapons and abilities, battle dice, movement dice and more than 100 item and monster cards — this is the ultimate Castlevania board game.
This amazing creation is the work of Redditor XsimonbelmontX, who last year crafted an outstanding Fallout-themed Monopoly board for his wife. Encouraged by the reaction to that project, he began working on a video game-themed board game that's more fitting his chosen username.
Here is the game board, in all its 8-bit splendor. Players pick one of 11 playable characters, placing their token on the board.
In front of each player is a character card, complete with a sliding mechanism to keep track of health. The red bit with the numbers behind that is the battle board, where the monster the player is currently battling is stood, the numbers keeping track of its health.
The re-purposed Trivial Pursuit piece is the experience meter. As the player defeats monsters, it fills with experience wedges. Once full the player gains a level, drawing a random card from the upgrade deck, granting them a new ability or more powerful weapons.
I couldn't name 11 different Castlevania characters, but a man who goes by the handle XsimonbelmontX certainly can. Each character has their own unique upgrade deck packed with specialize powers and equipment, so each plays a little differently than the rest.
These are some of the more than 100 item cards XsimonbelmontX made for the game.
And here are some of the iconic monsters players must dispatch.
He's even made random event cards that randomly show up instead of monster encounters.
The Curse Counter. Each time a player dies, the Curse Counter is advanced. Should it reach the end, all of the players lose and Dracula wins.
I want to play this. I would pay a great deal of money to own it. Sadly, the only existing copy is inside this lovely box.
I'd love to see Konami put something like this into production, though due to its complexity I doubt we'd ever see that happen. We're just going to have to make a pilgrimage to XsimonbelmontX's house and play it there instead. I hope he has snacks.
You can check out XsimonbelmontX's full gallery of the game over on Imgur.