You arrive in a dark fantasy land with a couple of other players. Your goal is to battle your way through until reaching a final boss. Along the way, you can find weapons and items to help you. But each time you play, these items will be different, and in different spots. And you’ll encounter different foes as well. Am I talking about Elden Ring Nightreign, the upcoming FromSoftware Elden Ring spin-off? I am! But I’m also talking about another game. A game played on tables.
A few years ago, around the time I started playing Elden Ring, I became introduced to Escape the Dark Castle. The tabletop role-playing game by Themeborne is fairly simple. In fact, some might not call it a role-playing game with how straightforward it plays. Players choose one of six characters and shuffle cards of random encounters and items, placing one of three bosses at the very end. Players then co-operatively play through these encounters, gradually getting stronger, before facing the boss at the end.
Explaining Escape the Dark Castle, its parallels to Elden Ring Nightreign may seem obvious. But when I first heard about Elden Ring Nightreign, it didn’t immediately come to mind....
