Newly released animated Disney film Strange World takes inspiration from exploration-filled adventure stories like Journey to the Centre of the Earth. But it also takes cues from the world of board games.
In fact, Strange World features a tabletop game all of its own – a fictional card game called Primal Outpost, apparently inspired by some of the best board games like Settlers of Catan, as well trading card games such as Magic: The Gathering and the Pokemon TCG. The game crops up more often than you’d expect, and even ties into the film’s plot in some interesting thematic ways.
In an interview with The Digital Fix published on the film’s release day of November 23, Strange World director Don Hall and screenwriter Qui Nguyen spoke about this imaginary tabletop title. Apparently, it’s not just nonsensical tabletop jargon – the film’s team actually designed a real game with real rules, that you could play… if it existed in the real world.
Rather than any kind of release, it was appears Primal Outpost was made just to appear in the Strange World movie – and also, apparently, designed to “confuse old people”.
According to Nguyen, it was the film’s visual development artist Cory Loftis who held that “it has to have rules that we all understand” – and promptly drew up a rule book from scratch.
When asked if Primal Outpost could become a real card game in future, the director, Hall said: “If the movie is a hit, who knows? But we’re ready because, like we said, it’s a playable game, thanks to Cory.”
We know one Disney board game is coming soon for sure – here’s the Disney Lorcana release date, and everything we know about it so far.