A highly anticipated new board game seeks to draw players into a mysterious world of islands and dangers that is impossible to explore in just one playthrough. Earlier this week, Red Raven Games launched the Kickstarter for Sleeping Gods, a new 1-4 player game that takes place in a massive open world. In Sleeping Gods, players will assume control of the Manticore, a steamship from the 1920s that finds itself in an a strange island chain after entering a fogbank in the Atlantic. Now trapped, the Manticore’s crew must find several totems scattered across the worlds to wake up the Sleeping Gods who could send them home.
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Sleeping Gods is unique for a few reasons. Instead of using a large board, Sleeping Gods features a 26-page atlas filled with dozens of interconnected maps. Each page edge contains an annotated page number, allowing players to explore in any direction. And because the map is so huge, it’s basically impossible to explore in just one game, which is estimated to take between 10-20 hours. Exploring different locations will also trigger a branching storyline that adds new dangers and consequences during play. If the Manticore chooses to abstain from helping a village, it might burn down during an attack or its residents might turn hostile. Sleeping Gods contains hundreds of different quests, each of which with multiple outcomes.
As players explore the world of Sleeping Gods, they’ll also level up the Manticore’s ship, which is comprised of nine different characters. Each character has its own abilities and health and can be equipped with unique abilities and equipment.
Having taken a look at Sleeping Gods at Gen Con, I loved that the game offered a massive world to explore, but didn’t require a huge time commitment. A full game takes only 10-20 hours and can be played in multiple sittings through the use of a campaign log. Players won’t need to sink a ton of time to playthrough a Sleeping Gods campaign, but they’ll likely want to come back and explore the world multiple times.
The Sleeping Gods Kickstarter has already raised over $375,000 at press time and has 22 days remaining. Players can get a copy of Sleeping Gods by pledging $70. A $100 pledge will also unlock the game’s Tides of Ruin expansion. Kickstarter fulfillment is estimated in May 2020.
