Yesterday, October 20, a Kickstarter campaign for "Darkest Dungeon" was launched: the board game started with a lofty goal of $300,000. And yesterday, that goal was easily reached. As of today, October 21, it has raised over $1.2 million, with 15 days still remaining.

Darkest Dungeon: The board game is much like the video game Darkest Dungeon: one to four players form a team of ragged heroes in a hamlet to explore the dungeon, fight monsters, and restore the heir's mansion to its original glory. They set out on a quest. But it's not just physical harm that threatens them. A "stressful morbidity system" forces each member of the party to deal with potentially debilitating paranoia, abuse, fear, irrationality, and "a litany of quirks that make sense for gameplay." [The board game campaign will unfold in 11 missions, three for each threat level, culminating in a showdown at the deepest level of the Darkest Dungeon. Each hero chooses three of the seven available skills at the start of each mission (or more as they level up) and chooses from two available actions (move, interact, change stance, use skills, etc.) each turn. In between missions, the player will return to the settlement to recover from the horrors encountered there.

There are only two levels of rewards available, and since this is a large board game with many parts, pledges can be quite high. Rules box, 8 hero and 64 monster miniatures, 32 dice, 12 double-sided room tiles, 16 hero boards, 4 skill boards, 1 hamlet board, 3 main dashboards, 10+ dungeon cards, 400+ tarot cards , poker cards, mini euro cards, and over 200 various tokens for $100, and for $150 you can get the "Core Box" for $100, plus the "Crimson Court" add-on which includes more monsters, tiles, and cards.

Not cheap by any means, but on the other hand, just take a look.

Due to the huge success of the campaign, several stretch goals have already been unlocked, which will add more heroes, monsters, and rooms to both the Core Set and Crimson Court than originally planned.

Darkest Dungeon: The Board Game is expected to begin shipping in November 2021 to allow the makers ample time to address unforeseen circumstances The Kickstarter campaign will run through November 6. Red Hook Studios announced today that the game will be available in Early Access on the Epic Games Store in 2021.