Board Game Review - Dark Souls the Deck Building Game from Steamforged Games

Board Game Spotlight where we take a brief look at games that have come across our table. Today we're taking a look at Dark Souls the Card Game from Steamforged Games.

Board Game Spotlight - Dark Souls: The Card Game
Players: 1-4 players
Playing Time: 45 - 60 min (Board Game Geek)
Age: 12+
Designer: David Carl
Artist: Tom Hutchings
Publisher: Steamforged Games Ltd.

Inspired by the video game from Bandai Namco and From Software, Dark Souls: The Card Game is a challenging deckbuilding card game. Choose your hero, “adapt your deck, evolve your strategy, and prepare to die!”
From the publisher “Players use unique decks of cards to fight the many enemies that lie within before ultimately confronting the powerful bosses. Using souls gathered from vanquished foes, players will expand and evolve their decks, making them more powerful. But time is of the essence; the spark dwindles. Each time a player dies you must return to the bonfire to regroup- and the bonfire won’t burn forever.”
In dark souls, players will start each with a deck built for a specific type of character. The base game comes with an Assassin, A herald, A knight, and a Sorcerer. A player will choose one of these character types to adventure forth against challenging foes. Through the course of the game, these decks will evolve by adding treasure cards that provide armor, weapons and abilities cards. Stamina cards may also be added to the deck to improve the abilities one does.

Combat in the game is unique in the sense that where you place your character and where enemies are placed on the battle board can determine who is attacked when. This strategy is important when moving around the battlefield and hitting your opponents.

The bonfire is the games way of telling time and progressing forward. If a player is defeated they lose the souls and treasures gained in the fights. If players choose to rest at the bonfire players may acquire the treasure and souls they earned in previous fights.

Overall the game is very challenging and fun. There’s a lot of strategy in building your deck. The game plays very well in solo mode or in cooperative mode. It is very important that players work together on acquiring cards, combat, and resting in order to progress the story forward fast enough before the bonfire goes out. The game is very thematic. I have not played too much of the Dark Souls video game but the videos I have watched of it make this card game seem to have a lot of connection to the difficulty of that version of the game.
The artwork is very dark and grim. Something that drew me into the game right away. It has a lot of story potential hidden with it. While the story isn’t narrative driven it can come from the cards encountered throughout gameplay.

This is definitely a unique game to bring to the table.

More information can be found at

Game or Developer Games - https://steamforged.com/dark-souls-the-card-game
Board Game Geek - https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/242667/dark-souls-card-game

Joe DeMarco a single father, freelance writer, game designer, quality assurance software tester, and business analyst. I am a big-time gamer, and really enjoy checking out all kinds of games available. Putting my curiosity to the app store I find random games to check out.
If you have a game you'd like me to review, contact me and let us see how we can work together.
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