The Dark Souls board game is well-known for its chunky minis. It packs in many faithful recreations from among FromSoftware’s ghastly cast of ghouls and monsters. But, according to its creators at Steamforged, the Elden Ring board game ups the ante, with even bigger and better creations.
“Elden Ring has produced some of the best models that we’ve ever made,” says lead designer Sherwin Matthews. He adds that it’s the subtle details that “people wouldn’t necessarily immediately pick up on” that really bring them to life. From the size of a creature’s stance to the position of a blade, no element is too small to bother with, and Steamforged has worked closely with FromSoft to make sure it injects “the appropriate energy or the appropriate feel and dynamism into our models”.
But while Matthews praises the delicate touch of Steamforged’s model designers, there’s one thing about Elden Ring’s minis compared to Dark Souls’, that will be immediately obvious to fans.
“They’re a lot bigger,” he says.
“The simple reason is because of the sheer volume of bosses,” Matthews goes on to explain. “There’s a lot of big enemies in this game. Obviously, we’ve talked about Margit; something like Flying Dragon Agheel is a big boy. If you think about Elden Ring, there’s a lot more large enemies like trolls – they’re all bigger enemies that you face.”
As a result, Elden Ring will come packaged in “a much bigger box than what the Dark Souls core set was… Looking at the sheer scale of the models, this box would be more like a cube,” Matthews says.
Working with license partners, the designer says Steamforged is always pushed to do one better than the last time round. He says this is never a bad thing though: “We never want to rest on our laurels, we always want to drive forward,” he explains.
Matthews adds, “I’m insanely proud and also slightly envious at the level of talent of our sculpting team. They are absolutely incredible. As far as I’m concerned, they’re wizards, actual wizards, and they turn around stuff in a way that simply astonishes me”.
The Elden Ring board game launches on Kickstarter on November 22. Stay tuned for more news and further details on its gameplay.