Asmodee Digital has updated their Steam release schedule for the coming months, giving updated times on delayed digital board game releases and announcing some new ones.
Among the new is Gloomhaven, which we’d previous covered, and a dungeon crawler inspired by long-lived, love it or leave it card game Munchkin. Coming in Q3 are The Lord of The Rings: Living Card Game, Terraforming Mars, Pandemic, and Bang!. In Q4 comes Five Tribes, while an adaptation of Gloom releases on Halloween. In 2019, expect to see Mansions of Madness: Mother’s Embrace, Munchkin, and Gloomhaven. Only a handful of the games have a precise release date.
Coming in Q3 2018:
- The Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game is an adaptation, rather than a straightforward port, of Fantasy Flight Games’ tabletop card game. It’s co-op, with a non-standard model for getting more packs and a narrative campaign. Last time we checked it looked pretty good. Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game launches into Steam Early Access on August 28th.
- Terraforming Mars is a port of Jacob Fryxelius' much-loved board game from recent years where players compete as corporations seeding forests, altering atmosphere, and filling oceans.
- Pandemic is a port of Matt Leacock's cooperative tabletop classic about fighting disease that has been available for a long time on mobile markets, but is just now coming to Steam.
- Bang! is a port of the social deduction classic by Emiliano Sciarra. It's about shooting the right one of your friends, tricking your friends into shooting each other, and getting shot by your friends. One for the Werewolves Within and Town of Salem crowd.
Coming in Q4 2018:
- Gloom is a port of Keith Baker's gothy, take-that style card game about trying to make your family of people have the worst possible lives while screwing over your opponents by making their families have a good life. It’s fittingly scheduled to release on Halloween this year.
- Five Tribes is Bruno Cathala's weirdo twist on the Worker Placement genre where each round players pick up a fistful of little people off the board and scatter them along a path to another location—only getting a benefit when they reach the last space. It’s chaotic and involves a lot of math, but like any of tabletop publisher Days of Wonder's releases it has a really fun gameplay loop and is still one I’m interested in playing years after its release.
And the in-development titles slated for 2019:
- Mansions of Madness: Mother’s Embrace is coming to Steam in Q1 2019. Other than that, we haven’t learned that much more about this game since it was announced earlier this year. It’s based on, but not a direct port of, Fantasy Flight Games’ nonstandard “dungeon crawler” based on Lovecraftian cosmic horror.
- Steve Jackson Games’ Munchkin is finally coming to digital next year, but as a “dungeon crawling digital adaptation” rather than a direct port of the card game. We know little of the game other than that is described as cooperative, “but at the end, there is only one winner.” Much loved by some tabletop gamers, much derided by others, Munchkin is a long-time fixture of the hobby and I'm very interested to see where this spiritual sequel of sorts goes.
- Finally, Gloomhaven, another adaptation rather than a port, is coming to Steam Early Access in Q1 2019. It’s co-designed by original Gloomhaven designer Cephalofair Games. It’s a dominant presence in the tabletop community, so any digital adaptation will likely make waves.
There’s not a lot to take away from this other than the dates and games, but there is a notable emphasis on original adaptations based on or inspired by board games and their worlds rather than direct digital ports of board games. It’s definitely a purposeful decision from Asmodee: “We saw a lot of excitement for original games after we announced Mansions of Madness: Mother’s Embrace in April," said Philippe Dao, Asmodee Digital’s CMO, in a press release, "Gloomhaven continues our commitment of expanding our catalog with more original video game experiences based on board game IPs and not just direct 1:1 adaptations of existing board games.”
Asmodee Digital is the videogames publishing arm of Asmodee Group, a major publisher and distributor of board games. They handle publishing, as well as development, for a wide variety of board and card games across Europe, North America, and China.