Leaked Descent board game confirmed as Legends of the Dark, artwork revealed
“Brand new edition of the hugely popular game” previously named by tie-in book The Shield of Daqan.
Update 30/07/20: Following its leak earlier this month, Descent: Legends of the Dark has been teased by publisher Fantasy Flight Games during its latest In-Flight Report announcement stream.
A large box was shown, seemingly confirming the game's title and artwork. The box also revealed Legend of the Dark's designers as Kara Centell-Dunk and Nathan Hajek, who have both worked on a number of expansions for Descent: Journeys in the Dark. A release date and further information were not announced.
Original story:
A new Descent board game, Legends of the Dark, has seemingly been leaked ahead of its official announcement.
As spotted by Ian Short - via BoardGameGeek - an Amazon US product description for upcoming tie-in book The Shield of Daqan: A Descent: Journeys in the Dark Novel made mention of a “brand new edition of the hugely popular game”, revealing the name Descent: Legends of the Dark.
The Amazon UK page for The Shield of Daqan, meanwhile, said that the book introduces “the brand new edition” of Descent: Journeys in the Dark, the dungeon-crawler game first released in 2005 and followed by a second edition in 2012.
Both Amazon product pages have since been updated to remove mention of the new edition and Legends of the Dark, instead referring to the book as being based on “the hugely popular Descent games”.
The existence of Descent: Legends of the Dark was backed up by a US trademark filing by Asmodee North America - which owns Descent studio Fantasy Flight Games - on June 12th for the game’s title. (As spotted by Reddit user lgats.) The trademark filing, which is currently pending as of the time of this story, was made under the category of board games and card games.
Last August, then-Fantasy Flight Games studio head Andrew Navaro said during a FFG Live discussion that there would be no further development of physical content for Descent: Journeys in the Dark’s second edition, as well as confirming that the 12 missing heroes from first edition would not be released for the second edition. Navaro confirmed that Road to Legend, the free companion app released for Journeys in the Dark, would remain available.
Asked whether Descent: Journeys in the Dark - Third Edition was a possibility, Navaro replied: “Not necessarily. But we are working on something Descent-related that I’m incredibly excited about. I think it’s easily one of the coolest, most ambitious things we’ve ever done.”
Navaro then clarified that he was referring to the Descent series “specifically”, rather than the series’ wider universe of Terrinoth, which is shared by miniatures game Runewars, adventure board game Runebound and a sourcebook for RPG system Genesys, Realms of Terrinoth.
“With this new project we’re really injecting, I think, a lot of life and depth into that world that wasn’t necessarily present before,” he added. “We’ll be going even deeper into it going forward.”
Fantasy Flight Games is yet to officially announce Descent: Legends of the Dark, with no details of gameplay, story or a potential release date available. The Shield of Daqan is due for publication on February 2nd 2021, potentially hinting at a launch window for the board game. Dicebreaker has reached out to Fantasy Flight for further information and will update this story as necessary.