The never ending Summer of videogame-to-board-game adaptations continues with a somewhat surprising entry: CGE, maker of the 16-million-selling party game behemoth Codenames, has just announced Kingdom Come Deliverance: The Board Game. It’s officially licensed by Warhorse, the videogame’s developer (based, like CGE, in Prague, Czechia), and it’s due out… checks notes… by the end of 2026?
In a press announcement, published on Wednesday alongside a very swanky, videogame industry-coded trailer (watch it below), CGE revealed KCD: The Board Game as its headline title for this October’s Essen SPIEL show, which it describes as “an epic adventure game mixed with euro elements, set in 15th-century Medieval Bohemia”.
Considering it’s a 90 minute game for one to four players, KCD: The Board Game is aiming to pack in a lot of elements from Warhorse’s infamously realism-heavy RPG.
“The game’s open-world nature encourages players to pursue their own goals and shape their stories as they wish,” says CGE. You’ll explore the map for five in-game days, completing “city stories” in three main settlements and side quests too, all via card-based skill checks fueled by the game’s core mechanic: deck building.
Essentially, you’ll gain XP for doing stuff, then “exchange experience for skill cards, allowing you to specialize and prepare for card tests needed to perform main actions”. CGE says these tests span all the classic life sim scrumptiousness I remember from playing KCD2: “stealing, fighting, befriending others, hunting, training your skills, or even picking herbs”.
Alongside collecting and upgrading skill cards, there’s more RPG-esque progression in the form of a player board with equipment to collect, that’ll make you better at certain tasks (bows for hunting, snazzy clothes for impressing nobles, etc).
Other familiar survival touchstones from the videogames are also present in your five days of rags-to-riches adventuring: CGE mentions eating to relieve hunger, inn visits to rest, washing dirty clothes, eavesdropping on rumors, and more. At first glance, it feels like a very heavy thematic and mechanical load to place on 90 minutes of play.
That said, I can’t fault the talent behind this project: it’s been designed by Tomáš Holek, creator of the smash hit eurogame SETI – one of our chosen best board games of all time – and Vlaada Chvátil, the designer behind Galaxy Trucker and (of course) Codenames itself. That’s an all-star double team for sure; whether their big-box, euro/adventure hybrid actually sticks the landing, we’ll have to wait and see.
It’s not the first time someone’s tried to get a tabletop version of Kingdom Come: Deliverance off the ground; another Czech studio called Boardcubator raised around $360,000 for an “app-driven cooperative living RPG game” in 2022, only to shutter the campaign without collecting backers’ cash, citing “the combination of expensive development costs and the uncertainty that exists in the board game industry these days”.
With CGE’s might behind it, however, this latest KCD board game isn’t going through crowdfunding at all: it’s already up for pre-order now, priced at $200 (€150), with bonus components on offer for early bird orders, and (of course) the inevitable metal coins addon, for those keen enough to drop the extra 50 bucks for full pecuniary immersion.
Is that you, do you think? As someone who absolutely lost himself in Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 last year, for a good month, I’m very tempted indeed, and can’t wait to give this game a test run. Come join our free Wargamer Discord community and let me know what you think.
Source: Wargamer
