Terraria’s co-op board game will tunnel its way onto Kickstarter later this month

The tabletop adaptation of video game Terraria is headed to crowdfunding at the end of this month, turning the immensely popular 2D miney-crafty hit into a co-op board game.

Terraria: The Board Game was revealed last summer as tabletop studio Paper Fort Games’ take on original developer Re-Logic’s multi-million-selling indie phenomenon.

The upcoming board game stays faithful to the broad strokes of Terraria by generating a 2D world across different biomes from a layout of gridded cards. Players can then explore their unique world by venturing above and below ground, encountering enemies and bosses, mining resources, and crafting both upgraded equipment and building a base. In other words: it’s Terraria, but as a board game!

Dispatching enemies - of which there are more than 30 different types - lets you gather new cards as loot, with armour and gear appearing on transparent cards that can be layered over your character board to actually dress your avatar in new outfits, which is pretty neat. Boosting the quality of your weapons grants the player better dice when resolving combat, combining with action cards that provide various buffs and advantages.

Whether traversing, fighting, mining, crafting or something else, the game runs on an action-point system that sees players spending their available points wisely, allowing for a wide variety of possible actions in keeping with the video game’s engrossing sandbox offering.

Along with smaller minions, there’ll be six bosses to take on - either with up to three friends or alone in a solo mode - in bigger battles, each represented by modular miniatures that can be altered as the big bads take damage. Those bosses may serve as the finale to each roughly 90-minute to two-hour session, as players race to complete series of objectives before time runs out. Those objectives can be changed and customised for each session, allowing for a different focus each time you play.

If you’re more a builder than a battler, expanding your base will invite new NPCs into your settlement that you can then interact with, giving your party bonuses to help them in their adventures. Constructing houses also unlocks new crafting stations, providing a wide array of gear and items to make from your collected goods.

As someone with hundreds of hours in Terraria: The Video Game, I was mighty impressed with what I saw of Terraria: The Board Game at tabletop convention Essen Spiel last year. The use of cards to generate a randomised world is a smart way of offering up a varied environment to run around in, while the flexible action system does seem to stay true to the heart of the video game’s eclectic mix of exploration, crafting, combat and survival. From those early impressions, it looks to be a thoughtful, well-considered adaptation of the sprawling adventure game.

Terraria: The Board Game will launch a Kickstarter campaign on May 28th, with a full release date yet to be announced.