The seals are breaking and we must Return to Dark Tower, now on Kickstarter

Restoration Games is thrilled to announce that their newest game, Return to Dark Tower, is now live on Kickstarter. This campaign brings the classic 80’s game back to life with new twists brought to you by a redesigned tower and app implementation. The campaign will run until February 4th.

The coolest game to ever hit the planet first appeared some 38 years ago, featuring an electronic tower that lit up, played music, and somehow ran an epic fantasy adventure game with its state-of-the-art technological wizardry. That game was Dark Tower. We want to bring you that same sense of awe and wonder, pushing the boundaries of what a board game can actually do. After 3 years of painstaking work by a team of two dozen designers, engineers, and artists, we are thrilled to present to you a game with echoes of that long-gone wonder but ultimately unlike any game you’ve ever experienced.

Return to Dark Tower is a cooperative game for 1 to 4 heroes who undertake epic quests, fight fearsome foes, and test their mettle against the looming darkness of the titular tower. Designed by Rob Daviau and Isaac Childres — designers of the two highest rated games of all time on Board Game Geek — along with Noah Cohen, Brian Neff, and Justin D. Jacobson, the streamlined rules offer players difficult choices about when to advance their objective, gather resources, deal with threats, or level up.

Isaac Childres’ Thoughts

This game is legit bonkers.

It’s the best word I can come up with to describe it. Like, if you think Gloomhaven is bonkers, Return to Dark Tower is super-bonkers. I mean, I could never in my wildest dreams create a game with such insane ambition, and I say that as the person who made Gloomhaven.

So there’s a tower, right? And it is this massive plastic thing with gears and motors and doors and lights and bluetooth communication and infrared sensors. And it is going to menace you, rumbling around, spitting skulls at you, and generally ruining your day. So much care and thought went into crafting it and making it affordable, and sure, it doesn’t do all the crazy things we wanted it to, but it more than lives up to its namesake, while at the same time elevating the game play.

But then there’s also an app that’s doing its thing, controlling the inner workings of the tower, tracking way more information than could reasonably be requested of a human, and providing a beautiful interface for players to interact with the tower and all that information. There’s just so many stories and quests we can pack into this thing, and they can change dynamically based on player actions.

At the end of the day, though, all that would mean nothing to me if the game play wasn’t solid, but it absolutely is. I mean, I would hope so – I helped design it after all – but it has just gone through so many iterations, sometimes it felt as though we’d never crack the nut and refine the system to where it needed to be.

But we did. It’s fun and entertaining and challenging and full of interesting decisions, and I really couldn’t be happier seeing all these elements shine and come together into a product that really is something special and extraordinary.

Mike Dunn, our lead tabletop editor, had a chance to play a prototype of it, so check out his preview for more information and see why it exceeded his expectations. Stay tuned to Gaming Trend for all your tabletop news.

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