Kingdom Death: Monster

Kingdom Death: Monster is a strategy board game designed to be played by four players. In Kingdom Death: Monster, players take on the role of adventurers who barely survive an attack by a monstrous lion. Forming a settlement nearby, they celebrate this victory with a yearly lantern festival followed by a ceremonial hunt against another monster. The game is a story-driven campaign that takes place over approximately 30 of these "lantern years". Most lantern years are divided into three phases: the hunt, the showdown, and the settlement phase. As a complete game is estimated to take about 60 play hours to complete, the game is designed in a manner that allows the current state of the game after completing any of the above phases to be easily recorded and resume at the next play sessions, and to swap players between sessions.[1]

One persistent element across all rounds are the player-characters that live in the settlement, which are created at the onset of the game or from other in-game events, and can die from the Showdown phase or numerous other actions. Each character has a set of attributes, including those typical of a tabletop role-playing game for combat such as strength and evasion, and measures of the character's courage and understanding. Characters have an Insanity attribute, representing how mentally unstable the character is; while this can force the character to perform irrational actions on certain events, Insanity also helps to protect the character from the horrors of the game's world. Characters also have a number of Survival points, which are generally spent if the player wishes to avoid taking certain types of damage or to gain an advantage. During the game, characters can also gain permanent injuries that affect their attributes or ability to participate in certain events, as well as disorders that also have impacts on attributes and abilities during certain phases of the game. All these attributes are recorded and persist between game sessions.

Kingdom Death: Monster was developed by Adam Poots. The initial idea for the game was conceived around 2008 while he was awaiting jury duty and reading through a rulebook for a role-playing game; he believed that he could make its gameplay systems better.[2] Key to his idea was the use of miniatures for the game, and he put about $10,000 of his own savings into finding freelance artists to design the characters and concept art for the "Kingdom Death" setting and to use 3D printing to produce figurines.[2] Poots ran a small Kickstarter campaign in 2009 to raise about $1700 for the production of one figurine he had planned for the game.[3] By 2010, Poots was working with a European artist who could mass-produce the figures in resin.[2]

While the miniatures had gained some attention, Poots still wanted to produce a game to go along with them and started to design the game.[2] Poots cites inspiration from HeroQuest and specifically its spinoff, Warhammer Quest, for the mechanics of the game.[4] His prior work experience in web browser-based applications helped ensure the gameplay systems made sense and had the necessary flow.[2] In 2009, he started another Kickstarter to develop the game as an iOS app, but the Kickstarter failed to reach its $10,000 goal.[3] With more of the gameplay mechanics set in place, Poots then started a third campaign in November 2012, seeking $35,000 to complete the design and production of the game. The Kickstarter concluded with over $2 million pledged, allowing Poots to develop plans for game expansions.[5] Poots believed that he and his team "over-delivered" on this campaign, making him feel "responsible and humbled" by the support from players, and he started to use the profits from additional sales toward further development and expansion of the game.[4]

Kingdom Death: Monster 1.5

Poots launched another Kickstarter during the 2016 American Thanksgiving holiday weekend to promote an updated printing of the game, Kingdom Death: Monster 1.5, which included various changes and improvements to the core game as well as new content in the form of sixteen new expansions, to start publishing in 2017. Poots sought $100,000 and offered incentives for existing owners to upgrade their edition to 1.5. The Kickstarter raised $1 million within 19 minutes of going live, the fastest such drive according to Kickstarter's David Gallagher.[3] Within a week, at least $5 million was pledged.[6] During the campaign, Poots announced special expansions that used licensed crossovers from the Pathfinder role-playing system and the video game Hyper Light Drifter. The campaign closed with nearly $12.4 million pledged from 19,264 backers.[7] At its conclusion, Kingdom Death: Monster was the highest earning game-related project funded through Kickstarter to that point.[8]

It was announced on Thursday October 12th, 2017 in Kickstarter Update 58[9] that the first wave of rewards from the 2016 Kickstarter would begin to ship to backers on October 13th, 2017 (Friday the 13th).

Although all content from the 2016 Kickstarter was expected to be delivered by the end of 2020, as of January 1st, 2021, the only new products to begin shipping were the Pinups of Death and Satan models, which include minimal in-game content. On January 8 2021, the following statement was released, "Our lovely containers on both the US and UK sides of the world have been patiently waiting in a rail yard since last year to be picked up. We have been informed the situation is complicated and vast, covering both a lack of man power and the need to continue dealing with incoming containers so things can be unburied." This statement confirmed that shipping of the current wave was already behind. This also confirmed that the most recent Black Friday sale included items that the company did not actually posses or have in inventory.

Kingdom Death: Monster is considered a boutique board game as the cost of the game runs from US$400 without the added expansions, while other board games typically cost significantly less. Much of this cost is considered reasonable due to the quality of the game's production, particularly the miniatures that Poots has artists design and fabricate through 3D printers.[10]

Sam Machkovich of Ars Technica called the game itself "brutal" in the volume of materials shipped with it and the estimated playing time, but believed all these feed into a "four-player co-op adventure of your wildest dreams".[11] The game is noted for having a steep learning curve, making it difficult, and is often compared to the Dark Souls series of video games.[4]

Lillian Cohen-Moore of Bitch noted that much of the art in Kingdom Death: Monster contains overtly sexual poses and looks for the female figurines and artwork in the game, stating that "This scale of female sexualization in Kingdom Death's characterizations outweighs, for me, any other merits this game could have going for it".[12] Poots replied that, as the game is not intended for younger audiences, he did not want to hamper his team of artists, instead allowing them to "bring forth their full potential and feel comfortable exploring a nightmare horror world". Poots stated that Kingdom Death includes pinup poses, inspired by pin-up models of the 1950s and 1960s of both male and female characters, feeling they are appropriate for the mature audiences intended for the game.[3] Charlie Hall of Polygon found that some of the imagery within the game's manual and figures was somewhat grotesque and explicit, turning off some players and drawing attention away from the actual game itself, which he otherwise considered "masterful".[13]