CD Projekt Red, one of the biggest video game developers in Europe, is teaming up with board game makers Go On Board to produce a deck-building game based on The Witcher. It’s called The Witcher: Old World, and it’s going to use the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter to do it.
According to BoardGameGeek News, the game takes place before Geralt of Rivia’s story, and will revolve around five different schools of witchers, with players battling monsters and each another, using decks in a race to see who can build up their witcher school’s notoriety first. Here’s a bit explanation from the game’s description:
The game lets players construct their own unique decks of cards by choosing from a wide range of abilities: attacks, dodges, and witcher combat magic — known as “signs”. Through card synergy, players aim to achieve powerful combos as they utilize their witcher school’s hallmark abilities to their full potential. Quests, battles, and even dice poker allow each player to earn money, obtain new items, and train their skills.
Throughout their journey players will earn more cards, unlock combos, and occasionally duel with one another in between completing contracts for killing monsters. Sounds neat!
Weirder is that the project will apparently be launched via a Kickstarter campaign going live sometime in May. This is the platform Go On Board used to crowdfund its previous table top games, the dice card game Valhalla and the miniatures game Titans, and it’s become the go-to for many other board game makers. Many of those, however, aren’t partnered with large companies. As recently as a year ago, CD Projekt Red was valued at over $6 billion.
That number has certainly tumbled since Cyberpunk 2077's messy launch last December, and again after large swaths of internal and proprietary data were reportedly stolen in a ransomware attack. Somehow I think the company could still afford to front the manufacturing costs for a new board game.