Return to Dark Tower

Last updated

Return to Dark Tower
Designers
Illustrators
  • Tim Burrell-Saward
  • Qistina Khalidah
  • Garrett Kaida
  • Jason D. Kingsley
PublishersRestoration Games
Publication2022
Genres
Players
  • 1–4
Playing time100–120 minutes
Skills

Return to Dark Tower is a board game for one to four players, designed and published by Restoration Games. The game is a sequel to the 1981 board game Dark Tower, by Milton Bradley Company. Return to Dark Tower has players cooperate or compete as they rule over kingdoms surrounding the titular Tower, with their chosen "heroes" gathering resources, defeating monsters and enhancing their strength. As the game progresses, the Tower dispenses corruption across the land, which players must cleanse, while also looking to identify the foe inhabiting the Tower, so that they may defeat it, to win the game. Return to Dark Tower features a circular mat that is sectioned into quarters, to represent the kingdoms, with a Bluetooth-powered Tower at the center, which is connected to an app that runs the game.

Contents

Return to Dark Tower was designed by a team of board game industry veterans - most notably the creator of Gloomhaven , Isaac Childres and the creator of Pandemic: Legacy , Rob Daviau. The game was in development for three years prior to the launch of a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter in January 2020. The Kickstarter campaign proved to be successful, with over $4 million raised, against a goal of $850,000. Return to Dark Tower was released in 2022. [1] In August 2022, a second printing of Return to Dark Tower raised $2 million on BackerKit. [2] [3]

Gameplay

The premise of Return to Dark Tower is that the Tower, which was once destroyed, has been rebuilt over many years by an unknown evil and now threatens to corrupt all the land. The central objective of the game is for the players to repel the attacks from the Tower, to identify the foe inside and to break in and kill it. One to four players take up position around a circular game mat representative of the realm, with a plastic electronic obelisk, representative of the Tower, situated at the center. The Tower is connected via Bluetooth to an app that prompts it to move with certain in-game events, as well as virtually organize and run the whole game. [4] Players are given command over their kingdom that includes their quarter of the game mat, complete with fortresses, communities and locations, which may produce economic resources or be the sites for quests and battles. Each player controls a character called a "hero", who may traverse between locations with every turn and retains special starting items and scale-able abilities dictated by a special card. [5] At the end of their turn, the player is to insert a plastic skull - representative of corruption - into an opening at the top of the Tower. When the skulls are released into a kingdom by the Tower, the kingdom's player must allocate them onto their structures and look to use their turns to battle the corruption. The skulls may be released either immediately or when a player is tasked with opening a compartment in the side of the Tower, causing the corruption to be released en masse. Players are allotted with an amount of turns representative of six months - the game becomes increasingly challenging, with more quests to complete, while also contending with the flow of corruption out of the Tower. If the Tower becomes too powerful and overwhelms the kingdoms, the game is lost. [6] Return to Dark Tower features cooperative and competitive game modes, with mindfulness pertaining to the others' kingdoms being crucial. A Standard game typically lasts between 100 and 120 minutes. [7]

Development

The original electronic board game Dark Tower was released by Milton Bradley Company in 1981. A strictly competitive game, Dark Tower pits up to four players against one another, with each player controlling a kingdom identical to the others, encompassing a quarter of the circular map board. At the center of the board is the battery-powered Tower, which contains a small membrane keyboard beneath a carousel that features a backlit display, depicting any number of pictures. Commanding a single hero game piece for their kingdom, each player inputs their actions and movements into the keyboard, followed by the Tower dictating what events will transpire. If the game determines that the player will face combat, the carousel will rotate and illuminate a picture associated with a foe and the game will determine if the battle is successful and how many troops the players has lost. After each turn, the Tower rotates, assigning consequences to different kingdoms. To win the game, players must obtain three keys within their kingdom, muster their forces and overcome the Tower itself in an attack. [8] Though Milton Bradley was the third-largest toy manufacturer in the United States at the time of the Dark Tower's release, sales had slowed down, motivating the company to invest heavily in the game's success. Milton-Bradley invested between $750,000 to $1 million in developing the computer technology and programming to run the Tower. As such, Dark Tower was sold at between $55 and $65 - a price significantly higher than most board games. Despite its costs, Dark Tower was a critical success, with it being one of the most sought-after toys of 1981. [9]

Return to Dark Tower was designed by a team working at Restoration Games, a company founded in 2016 that specializes in restoring out-of-production board games, generally with new features and technology support added. [10] Restoration Games president Justin D. Jacobson stated in an interview that he contacted the creators of the original Dark Tower and reached an agreement that would allow for Restoration Games to move forward with developing and publishing a sequel. [11] In addition to Jacobson, Noah Cohen and Brian Neff, the designers of Return to Dark Tower included Isaac Childres and Rob Daviau, the lead designers of Gloomhaven and Pandemic: Legacy , respectively—two of the most-popular modern board games. [7] Prior to the launch of the project's crowdfunding campaign in January 2020, Return to Dark Tower was in development for three years, with an emphasis upon modifying the rules to focus on cooperation, as well as developing the game's technology. The sequel's tower design was led by Tim Burrell-Saward, designer of connected tabletop game Beasts of Balance, and required extensive research and testing to allow for layers of interior chambers that spin and hatches lining the compartments intended to store skulls. [12] [6] Likewise, the development team was challenged with developing the app software necessary for connecting with the Tower via Bluetooth technology and coordinating the game's mechanics. [12] In August 2018, following their successful Kickstarter campaign for the restoration of Fireball Island , Restoration Games announced Return to Dark Tower, along with their intentions to fund it through crowdfunding, as well. [13]

Restoration Games launched the Kickstarter campaign for Return to Dark Tower on January 14, 2020. In addition to the base game, a number of other rewards were available, including the two expansions, Alliance and Dark Horde, featuring new playable heroes and miniature figurines. [14] Within four hours, the project was successfully funded for $850,000. [6] By the conclusion of the campaign on February 4, 2020, over $4 million was raised. [15] [5] In 2022, a second printing of Return to Dark Tower was printed after crowdfunding over $2 million on BackerKit. [2] [3]

Reception

James Palmer, writing for Smithsonian , called it one of the best board games of 2022, stating that "the appeal of a big old tower that makes strange noises hasn’t gone away." [16]

Related Research Articles

<i>HeroQuest</i> 1989 fantasy-RPG-themed board game (re-released 2021)

HeroQuest, is an adventure board game created by Milton Bradley in conjunction with the British company Games Workshop in 1989, and re-released in 2021. The game is loosely based around archetypes of fantasy role-playing games: the game itself was actually a game system, allowing the gamemaster to create dungeons of their own design using the provided game board, tiles, furnishings and figures. The game manual describes Morcar/Zargon as a former apprentice of Mentor, and the parchment text is read aloud from Mentor's perspective. Several expansions have been released, each adding new tiles, traps, artifacts, and monsters to the core system.

<i>Dark Tower</i> (game)

Dark Tower is a 1981 electronic board game, by Milton Bradley Company, for one to four players. The object of the game is to amass an army, collect the three keys to the Tower, and defeat the evil within. Advertising for the game included a television commercial featuring Orson Welles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kickstarter</span> US-based crowdfunding platform

Kickstarter, PBC is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of February 2023, Kickstarter has received US$7 billion in pledges from 21.7 million backers to fund 233,626 projects, such as films, music, stage shows, comics, journalism, video games, board games, technology, publishing, and food-related projects.

Video game development has typically been funded by large publishing companies or are alternatively paid for mostly by the developers themselves as independent titles. Other funding may come from government incentives or from private funding.

The Magical Realms of Tír na nÓg: Escape from Necron 7 – Revenge of Cuchulainn: The Official Game of the Movie – Chapter 2 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa, also called Barkley 2, was a role-playing video game being developed by Tales of Game's Studios. The game was intended to be a sequel to Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, a 2008 freeware title which itself is a fan game sequel to the basketball game Barkley Shut Up and Jam! and the film Space Jam.

Justin D. Jacobson is an attorney and professional game designer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fig (company)</span> Crowdfunding platform for video games

Fig was a crowdfunding platform for video games. It launched in August 2015. Unlike traditional crowdfunding approaches like Kickstarter, where individuals can back a project to receive rewards, Fig used a mixed model that includes individual backing and the opportunity for uncredited investors to invest as to obtain a share of future revenues for successful projects. At the end of 2017, four projects had begun generating returns, returning 245% to Fig investors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harebrained Schemes</span> American video game developer

Harebrained Schemes, LLC is an American video game developer based in Seattle, Washington. It was co-founded in 2011 by Jordan Weisman and Mitch Gitelman. Prior to founding Harebrained Schemes, Weisman and Gitelman worked together on the MechCommander and Crimson Skies franchises at FASA, another company founded by Weisman. As of mid-2015, the studio had under 60 employees. The studio was acquired by Paradox Interactive in June 2018. Harebrained Schemes and Paradox Interactive parted ways on January 1, 2024.

<i>Golem Arcana</i> 2014 tabletop game

Golem Arcana was a tabletop miniature wargaming game developed and published by Harebrained Schemes for iOS and Android devices. The game combines physical miniatures on a game board with a mobile app that much of the gameplay takes place in; the physical pieces and the app communicate through the use of a Bluetooth stylus. Several elements of the game, including special abilities and optional missions, exist only within the app.

Dark Souls – The Board Game is a miniature-based exploration board game created by Steamforged Games. It was released in April 2017 and is based on the Dark Souls video game series by FromSoftware and Bandai Namco Entertainment. A crowdfunding campaign raised over £3.7 million was used to fund the project.

SeaFall is a board game designed by Rob Daviau and published in 2016 by Plaid Hat Games. SeaFall is a game of colonial era exploration which uses a legacy format, meaning the board and components change during each game, creating a different game each time and a story with a beginning, middle, and end. The game is played by 3–5 players, each of whom takes on the role of a province taking to the seas after a long dark age. Players explore the game board with their ships, revealing islands and other surprises. The game contains 430 entries in a Captain's Booke, a journal which is read in sections when players trigger in-game events called milestones. The story contains about 15 games' worth of content, with each game taking about two hours to play.

Snapshot Games is a Bulgarian video game developer headquartered in Sofia. Snapshot Games was founded in 2013 by Julian Gollop and David Kaye. Gollop is recognized for creating the X-COM video game franchise in the 1990s with X-COM: UFO Defense and X-COM: Apocalypse. Gollop also is the CEO of Snapshot Games. In addition to Gollop, the company includes about eight developers who are industry veterans with years of previous experience working for Ubisoft Sofia, Crytek Black Sea, and other Bulgaria studios.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Legacy game</span> Board game genre

A legacy game is a variant of tabletop board games in which the game itself is designed, through various mechanics, to change permanently over the course of a series of sessions.

<i>Gloomhaven</i> 2017 cooperative strategy role-playing board game

Gloomhaven is a cooperative board game for one to four players designed by Isaac Childres and published by Cephalofair Games in 2017. It is a campaign-based dungeon crawl game including a narrative campaign, 95 unique playable scenarios, and 17 playable classes. Since its introduction the game has been acclaimed by reviewers, and has been described as one of the best board games ever made.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rob Daviau</span> American game designer

Rob Daviau is an American game designer known for creating legacy board gaming.

<i>Tabletopia</i> Gaming website

Tabletopia is an online portal for users to play and create virtual tabletop games. The platform is developed by Tabletopia Inc and initially was released as a web browser based service after a successful crowdfunding campaign in August 2015. In December 2016 Tabletopia was released on Steam, and later in 2018 became available in AppStore and Google Play.

<i>Gloomhaven</i> (video game) 2021 video game

Gloomhaven is a turn-based strategy role-playing video game, developed by Flaming Fowl Studios and published by Asmodee Digital. It is an adaptation of the tabletop game by the same name. Following two years of early access, Gloomhaven was released for Windows on October 20, 2021 and macOS on November 25, 2021. The game was ported to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S in September 2023.

<i>Cartographers</i> (board game) Roll and write board game

Cartographers is a roll and write board game designed by Jordy Adan and published in 2019 by Thunderworks Games. It is part of the Roll Player universe. In the game, players aim to draw terrains based on drawn cards that award points based on the relevant letter cards. The game received positive reviews, and was nominated for the Kennerspiel des Jahres, but lost to The Crew. It was also runner-up to Parks for the Best Family Game of the 2019 Board Game Quests Awards. An app for solitary play was released in 2020.

BackerKit is a crowdfunding platform focusing on creative projects with an emphasis on tabletop games and fantasy books. On ethical grounds, BackerKit bans projects containing art produced by Generative AI.

References

  1. ↑ "Return to Dark Tower".
  2. 1 2 Theel, Charlie (2022-06-23). "Return to Dark Tower is a fascinating and expensive sequel to the cult classic board game". Polygon. Retrieved 2024-09-05.
  3. 1 2 Hall, Charlie (2023-07-18). "Kickstarter rival Backerkit exits beta on the heels of a successful Gloomhaven campaign". Polygon. Retrieved 2024-09-05.
  4. ↑ Romain, Lindsey (January 14, 2020). "RETURN TO DARK TOWER Updates an Iconic Role-Playing Game". Nerdist.com . Retrieved March 24, 2020.
  5. 1 2 Ackerman, Dan (March 11, 2020). "A cult '80s electronic game gets an app-driven reboot in Return to Dark Tower". CNET . Retrieved March 24, 2020.
  6. 1 2 3 Marks, Tom (January 30, 2020). "Return to Dark Tower: First Impressions and Unboxing Its Massive Mechanical Tower". IGN . Retrieved March 24, 2020.
  7. 1 2 Dohm-Sanchez, Jeffrey (January 15, 2020). "Classic Game 'Return to Dark Tower' Gets a Makeover". ICv2 . Retrieved March 24, 2020.
  8. ↑ Kelly, James Floyd (June 30, 2011). "GeekDad Retro Gaming: Dark Tower". Wired . Retrieved April 1, 2020.
  9. ↑ Harmetz, Aljean (September 23, 1981). "New Bradley Game Tests Fickle Market". The New York Times . Retrieved April 1, 2020.
  10. ↑ Francis, Eric J. (February 21, 2020). "Board Games From the '80s Are Rebooted for Generation X". Bloomberg News . Retrieved April 2, 2020.
  11. ↑ Bower's Game Corner (August 3, 2018). Gencon Bonanza 2018: Return To Dark Tower Interview (YouTube). Indiana Convention Center, Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. Archived from the original on April 2, 2020. Retrieved April 2, 2020.
  12. 1 2 Hall, Charlie (January 14, 2020). "The Gloomhaven and Pandemic Legacy creators team up for a new project". Polygon . Retrieved April 2, 2020.
  13. ↑ Kuchera, Ben (August 3, 2018). "The classic, 'high tech' board game Dark Tower is coming back in 2020". Polygon . Retrieved April 2, 2020.
  14. ↑ Elsam, Sara (January 15, 2020). "Pandemic Legacy and Gloomhaven creators resurrect '80s board game Dark Tower". Dicebreaker . Retrieved April 3, 2020.
  15. ↑ Elderkin, Beth (January 21, 2020). "Return to Dark Tower, Fight a Terminator, and Save Some Butterflies in the Latest Tabletop News". Gizmodo . Retrieved April 3, 2020.
  16. ↑ Palmer, James (December 20, 2022). "The Best Board Games of 2022". Smithsonian Magazine.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.