Digital boardgames are a strange beast. By pure number alone, most exist as adaptations of their physical counterparts, published as a mod for Tabletop Simulator or on one of the online boardgame portals like Board Game Arena, Rally the Troops, Screentop, Tabletopia, etc.
Popular physical games will sometimes get their own standalone adaptations (Gloomhaven, Dune: Imperium, Root, Wingspan, etc.), but these are generally quite rare, in part due to the high cost associated with their production and the ambiguous able to forecast revenue against that (physical fans may just play the physical game). Fan-created standalone digital adaptations fill in the market gaps here where there is digital “will” but no delivered “way”, with games like the One Piece TCG simulator app or the War of the Ring client.
Most rare of all though are digital games that “play” like physical boardgames but have no actual physical counterpart. These games, at best, embrace the affordances of videogames to enhance and expand on the “sense” of playing something that could plausibly be physical, but don’t directly owe some indexical truth back to a physical source. Armello is by far the most notable here, but besides that there are surprisingly few others (Antihero is another).
As a fan of games like Armello (and boardgames more broadly), it’s something I wish was explored more. The design space that circles around both structured, rule-based play and the “limitless” potential of videogames is, I think, more fertile territory for moving games “forward” rather than micro-iterating on progression trees in “first person shooters” or “character action adventure” games.
This is to say that, when I got the first glimpse of Nic Tringali’s The Banished Vault, I was well primed to receive its many gifts. As the full vision of The Banished Vault came into focus over the years, every new detail prompted in me a reflexive “Hell Yeah”.
Gothic, Grimdark Sci-fi? Hell Yeah.Harsh, D&D 2E Black and White Illustrations? Hell Yeah.An all consuming void of nothingness? Hell yeah.Worker placement mechanics? Hell Yeah.Rougelike-y Survival Mechanics? Hell Yeah.
The list (and “Hell Yeahs”) goes on.
Tringali’s game also holds a special place in my heart beyond my own affinity for it. Development on The Banished Vault roughly started, and ran parallel to, the development of my own weirdo strategy game Cantata.
From across the void of the internet, seeing someone else on the path, attempting something equally strange made the whole endeavor feel less lonely. No matter what happened, we had each other, stellar bodies locked in orbit amongst the cloud of overlapping steam tags.
I met Nic in person for the first time this past year at GDC, and immediately gave them a big hug. It felt appropriate — two fellow travelers come together after a long journey apart.
Talking with Nic for Game Data felt like a bit of a retrospective for both The Banished Vault and Cantata, both of us sharing what got us through the projects, talking through the details and similarities/differences.
It’s a conversation I’m happy to bring you all, and hope you enjoy hearing Nic and I talk about all the intricacies of building strategy games trying to do things that are both new (digital boardgames!) and old (boardgames!) at the same time. Enjoy!
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