A Hellboy board game has made a million dollars in pre-orders before the first day of its Kickstarter campaign. It equates to more than 8,000 sales at the time of writing.
The game is based on the graphic novels rather than the movie adaptations. It’s a co-op for one to four players, controlling Hellboy, Abe, Liz and Johann. In the game:
You become a member of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defence (BPRD), ready to investigate occult threats that threaten our very existence. You will explore gothic locations, hunt down clues, discover artefacts, fight horrific creatures and face off against terrifying bosses.
The core of the game involves investigating a scene to learn more about the mission’s end boss. Spending more time investigating ups the chances of victory in the final battle, though it will also increase the risk of the end monster increasing its strength or the game hitting its time limit on the “Impending Doom” track. There’ll also be minion battles along the way.
The final battle involves the characters using custom colored dice, unleashing special abilities and having the option to team up to combine powers.
The game certainly isn’t lacking on the component front with all manner of cubes, cards and tokens. The base game will retail for £70 (around US$96) and includes indivual figures for the player characters plus three bosses (giant frog monster, Rasputin and tentacle monster) and 18 minion figures made up of five different designs.
For the Kickstarter campaign, however, you can only buy a complete pack that includes the base game, two expansions, a graphic novel (in digital form), an exclusive alternate figure for Hellboy (with horns) and a set of additional minion figures that’s rapidly growing as stretch goals get added. At the time of writing, buyers will get more than 100 figures in total covering more than 30 characters and minion/monster/nazi designs.