Tales from the Loop board game arrives on Kickstarter, free print-and-play demo out now
Tabletop RPG adaptation arriving next spring.
The board game adaptation of sci-fi tabletop RPG Tales from the Loop has arrived on Kickstarter, with a free demo of the upcoming board game available to download now.
Tales from the Loop: The Board Game is based on Free League Publishing’s 2017 roleplaying game, which in turn was inspired by Simon Stålenhag’s series of art books set in an alternate-reality 1980s Sweden. Stålenhag’s first two art books, Tales from the Loop and Things from the Flood - which was also brought to the tabletop as an RPG - were recently turned into an Amazon Prime Video series.
The Stranger Things-like premise of the world centres around the titular Loop, a secretive underground particle collider in the countryside that results in otherworldly side effects, from futuristic robots to dinosaurs.
As in the Tales from the Loop RPG, the upcoming board game casts players as children who investigate the strange happenings in their local town. The co-op board game begins with the kids at school, before they head out to explore locations around the board, encountering events and threats. Free League Publishing CEO and co-founder Tomas Härenstam previously gave Dicebreaker a first look at the game.
The board game balances the characters’ Goonies-esque adventures and their everyday life, with decks of cards dedicated to completing school work and chores in-between seeking out rumours and attempting to solve the main mystery of each scenario. Players are able to take actions in any order they choose, meaning there should be minimal waiting between turns.
Tales from the Loop: The Board Game features five different characters based on the classes in the tabletop RPG, along with four unique scenarios that each take between an hour-and-a-half and two-and-a-half-hours to complete. More scenarios may be added to the Kickstarter edition of the board game as stretch goals.
Joining Stålenhag on the project is lead designer Martin Takaichi, who previously worked on Free League’s board game adaptation of PC game Crusader Kings.
The board game includes miniatures of Tales from the Loop’s robotic machines sculpted by Dust Studio, the creator of alt-history wargame Dust 1947. Additional miniatures will be unlocked as stretch goals during the Kickstarter campaign, including a Gorgosaurus and accompanying bonus scenario featuring the dinosaur. The base game comes with unpainted models, with pre-painted figures available as a higher backer tier.
The Tales from the Loop: The Board Game Kickstarter campaign is live now, and will run until May 7th. At the time of writing, the campaign has already more than doubled its initial £40,000 goal; the board game is planned to arrive with backers in May 2021, with a retail release to follow.
A print-and-play game demo is available to download now. While the Tales from the Loop: The Board Game print-and-play doesn’t include the full game, the alpha version of the game includes four of the five characters and a complete scenario, allowing it to be played by up to four players.