The Witcher expands its universe with a board game. It goes by the name of “Old World” and is to be financed through Kickstarter. The famous and popular witcher Geralt von Rivia will not appear here, however. Because Old World is set in a time long before the “White Wolf” personally went on a monster hunt.
This is how The Witcher: Old World plays
PvP in the Witcher Universe: Old World wants to mix RPG elements with a card-based gameplay. In a round, between two to five players compete against each other, each from a different school of witchers. For example those of the wolf, the cat, the griffin, the viper or the bear.
The gameplay: The game is about the players using the special skills of their respective school together with the decks of cards and combining them with one another to create powerful synergies.
When does the board game appear? The Witcher: Old World Kickstarter campaign is slated to start in May 2021. The publication of the finished product, however, is scheduled for April 2022. The board game should appear once as a starter and a deluxe version.
Hasn’t that happened before? Old World won’t be the first board game in The Witcher universe. In 2015, CD PR and R. Talsorian Games announced The Witcher Role-Playing Game, which was finally released in 2018 and received two expansions by 2020.
Board game implementations of video games
The Witcher is by far not the first game that is also implemented as a board game. Many such projects have been announced and appeared over the years.
No wonder: In 2018, board games were much more popular on Kickstarter than video games. In this context, for example, the following were announced:
At the same time it is also going in the other direction. Sometimes board games also have a video game implementation. In 2020, Valve even hosted its own festival on Steam that was only about board games.