Fantasy Flight anounces Descent: Legends of the Dark

"For years, your journeys have taken you across the fantasy realm of Terrinoth, venturing into dark forests, shadowy cities, ancient crypts, and misty swamps… but your true legend is about to begin."

During a livestream event at Spiel.Digital, Fantasy Flight has officially announced Descent: Legends of the Dark, the next evolution of the classic Descent boardgame for 1-4 players. Originally teased during the in-flight report at GenCon, the team was very careful to point out that Legends of the Dark is not the third edition of Descent. The original Descent and the much-loved second edition are, at their core, one-versus-many board games, with the hero characters actively competing against the game master player. Descent: Legends of the Dark has been redesigned from the bottom up as a fully cooperative, app driven, story and narrative centered, role-playing board game. The game box is labeled as “Act One” and will contain the overarching campaign "Blood and Flame", split into 16 quests, slated to occupy a total of around 50 hours of fantasy play. Future acts two and three, of equal size, are planned.

Designers Kara Centell-Dunk and Nathan I. Hajek also explained some of the gameplay differences in Descent. One of the downsides in Descent was the concept of fatigue and rest, with players using up their fatigue, only having to later skip a turn to rest and heal. In Legends of the Dark, the rest system is replaced with a series of double-sided cards. Cards build up fatigue, and in stead of skipping a turn, players can flip cards, clearing the fatigue and exposing a new skill, item, or ability. Even the character cards are double sided, flipping to new versions of each hero. Clear sleeves are included to facilitate creating double sided cards from 2 items.

The game looks impressive, with stunning new art, and 3D terrain tiles, fully integrated into the game play. Be ready to climb trees, throw evil-doers off of balconies, and leap from upper floors. Custom 6-, 8-, and 12-sided dice promise exciting combat. The expected miniatures are made of a new, harder, plastic, promising more detail while still being durable. Descent: Legends of the Dark is scheduled for release to retail in Q2 2021. For more details, check out Fantasy Flight’s webpage on this giant cube of adventure here.