Dark Souls: The Board Game – Painted World of Ariamis Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Dark Souls: The Board Game – Painted World of Ariamis from Steamforged Games. This is the second attempt by Steamforged Games to fix the Dark Souls board game and we let you know how it well it works.

Hipster gamers might know Steamforged Games (SFG) because of Guild Ball, but the Dark Souls Kickstarter put them into the gaming spotlight. It funded in May of 2016 with $5.4 million in pledges, making it the twelfth-most funded project in the history of Kickstarter at that time.

That was the high point for the Dark Souls game. The unexpected success led to stretch goal bloat, which led to increased design time and delays. The final product was released in multiple waves, with many gamers complaining about the printed ruleset, especially some of the design decisions and repetitiveness.

In September 2022, SFG announce they were revisiting the Dark Souls franchise by releasing two new core sets directly to retail. These two core sets would take place covering two new areas from the Dark Souls franchise not included in the original KS campaign—the Painted World of Ariamis and the Tomb of the Giants. Besides addressing issues from the first Kickstarter, SFG promised to include game changes made by the community as well as their own game-design tweaks for the new core sets. It also included a revised campaign mode designed to be backward compatible with existing Dark Souls products through future (and free!) card downloads from their website.

I was lucky enough to receive a copy of Painted World of Ariamis. I did not receive, nor have I played, Tomb of the Giants. Read on to find out my thoughts on the game!

NOTE: I have never played the original game, so this review will not focus on changes between the original