Fallout board game expansion heads to New California with co-op and more story paths

The irradiated world of the Fallout board game is getting a little bit bigger later this year, with the announcement of the first expansion for the video game spin-off.

New California takes the roleplaying-lite adventure game to the titular state, represented with 12 additional map tiles and five extra playable characters – including Fallout 4’s chirpy robot assistant Mister Handy, who’s able to repair himself using junk cards.

The characters can head out on two new scenarios spanning some of Fallout’s more memorable locations, from The Hole and the Cathedral to the Lost Hills Bunker.

The first scenario, Rise of the Master, involves the battle between the Brotherhood of Steel and the secretive Unity.

It’s the second that’s more intriguing, though, as the New California mission brings with it new support for co-operative play, as players work together to try and remedy the drought faced by a village.

Alongside the extra pair of scenarios, the New California box aims to bump up the replayability of each individual mission with multiple versions of the quest cards that drive the game’s branching storylines. The situations and choices remain similar, but have the potential to lead players to different outcomes each time.

It’s a promising selection of new features and options, but New California also avoids addressing Fallout’s much-discussed scoring system, which we found to be the otherwise stellar game’s weak spot – though with full details of how the co-op mode will work yet to be revealed, it could be that a possible fix is on the horizon.

Fallout: New California will be out in Q4 of this year, so expect a nuclear winter.