Eve Online goes gunning for Twilight Imperium with a massive new 4X board game

polygon.com:

The last five years of board gaming innovation has proven that video game licenses can hold their own against the best that the tabletop world has to offer. Look no further than Dorfromantik, the breakout indie hit that lit up the charts on Steam when it was released in 2022. In 2023 its tabletop interpretation, Dorfromantik: The Board Game, went on to win the Spiel des Jahres, arguably the most prestigious award in all of tabletop gaming.

For 2024 it seems as though many more developers in the world of board gaming suddenly want to throw their hat into the ring with high-profile video game crossovers of their own. Studios are drawing up projects based on other indie hits, like Dead Cells, as well as the bestselling franchise in video gaming history, Activision’s juggernaut Call of Duty. Iceland’s CCP Games wants a piece of the action as well. The crowdfunding campaign for Eve: War for New Eden goes live today, and Polygon sat down with the developers at Titan Forge to learn more.

Eve Online is one of the most notoriously complex games ever created, one part spacefaring economic simulation, one part social experiment, and two parts spreadsheets in space. But beneath the layers that obscure it, Eve is dead simple: It’s a competitive 4X game where players explore a universe, exploit it for resources, expand their empires, and exterminate the opposition. It’s a beloved genre with just as rich a history on the tabletop as in video gaming. But to bring all the same features wholesale into a board game would be madness. Instead, the team at Titan Forge is planning something on a slightly different scale.

Up to four players will each take on the role of one of Eve’s iconic in-fiction factions — the Amarr Empire, the Caldari State, the Gallente Federation, or the Minmatar Republic. In a recent interview, co-designer and Eve veteran Radosław Dmochowski said that each faction will start the game on a tile representing their home star system, and with a thick stack of cards