Ambitious, ‘experimental’ board game Trudvang Legends tells mythical stories in an ever-changing world

A new board game wants to recreate the endless cycle of history and give players the chance to have their legendary deeds echo through the ages.

Trudvang Legends is based on Trudvang Chronicles, a roleplaying game steeped in Norse and Celtic that raised more than £235,000 on Kickstarter in 2016.

The board game spin-off has found its way over to Zombicide studio CMON, with Eric Lang – no stranger to mythology himself, thanks to the Japanese-inspired Rising Sun and Norse-flavoured Blood Rage – joining Arcadia Quest co-designers Guilherme Goulart and Fel Barros on the grand project.

Among the game’s most ambitious elements is a dynamic living world that aims to simulate the distant repercussions of events that happened generations ago. Players’ actions will be able to physically and permanently change the game’s board, with future playthroughs taking place in the ever-changing setting.

Although every game and decision will have an effect on the board, Trudvang Legends is described as being endlessly replayable, with changes able to influence the flow of the Adventure Books that drive the game’s many stories.

Players will be able to establish their characters as rulers and even gods, impacting the relationship between the setting’s inhabitants, overthrowing kings, discovering new regions to explore and more.

Gameplay is simply described as being story-led, with the confirmation that there will be miniatures representing both heroes and monsters on the board.

Lang described the design as “experimental”, referring back to a tweet where he described the then-untitled game as “a long time in the making, with lots of restarts and exciting/terrifying design moments”.

"The world of Trudvang presents us with an exciting opportunity to create a really innovative game based on the cycles of history and legend," he added. "We're looking to push some boundaries with this game, and really commit to the concept of a living world."

Trudvang Legends will be a little longer in the making, too – expect a Kickstarter for the game in the second quarter of 2019, with a release to follow.