Daniel (@dungeondive) takes a deep look at Rune, Spencer Campbell’s solo Souls-like, and is won over — he argues it captures the tone of Dark Souls better than the official Dark Souls board game ever did. He’s honest that the plain graphic design left it on his shelf for a while, and he’d love a deluxe boxed edition, because despite the “solo RPG” label this plays squarely as a board game: you need a 4x4 grid, tokens, printed cards and printed realms to play.
What makes it sing is the marriage of a point-crawl through tightly scripted realms — each with its own clock and death penalty, environmental-storytelling lore, and one-time-only exploration — with a superb tactical combat puzzle. You roll stamina dice and assign them to weapon, spell and gear abilities on the battle board, building Dark-Souls-style “builds” from runes won off realm bosses. He plays out a fight against the Azure First Sign and rediscovers the key lesson: dodge-roll into the enemy’s range gap to dodge its attack. Simple, fast, full of meaningful choices — and, he notes, real environmental lore the Dark Souls board game completely lacked. Highly recommended, ideally as the PDF.
Daniel reckons Rune out-Dark-Souls the official Dark Souls board game, largely through lore and environmental storytelling. When a small indie nails a feel that a big licensed game misses, what do you think makes the difference?