Kinfire Chronicles is an ambitious new board game that shares a writer with The Witcher 3
It took a global pandemic to slow Jane Hoffacker down. The former video game developer began her career with a three-year stint at Activision, where she worked on Guitar Heroand Skylanders. She eventually moved on to a scrappy startup called Riot Games where, nine years later, she found herself serving as the executive producer on Arcane, the critically acclaimed animated Netflix series based on League of Legends. Despite her extensive experience and expertise in games, it somehow wasn’t until the COVID-19 shutdown that she first played Dungeons & Dragons — and that’s when she got hooked on tabletop gaming.
“I’m ashamed to admit that it took me so long,” she said. “But I fell in love with that experience, that kind of shared journey and shared adventure that you take on with friends. I remember thinking, Why did it take me so long?”
The answer, she decided, was that the barrier to entry in today’s tabletop games is simply too high. Modern RPGs like D&D, for instance, require lots of preparation and a skilled player — the Dungeon Master — to lead the experience. Meanwhile, campaign-focused board games like Gloomhaven and Descent: Legends of the Dark have elaborate rulesets and take a long time to set up. What if there were a middle ground, something that could pull people away from their screens and monitors to spend time together around the table, as well as something more streamlined and easy to learn?
From that idea, the concept for Kinfire Chronicles: Night’s Fallwas born. The crowdfunding campaign for the project goes live Tuesday, and Polygon has important details on what to expect in the final product. It’s a campaign in a box, and like many high-concept board games produced today, it also comes with a premium
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