Sublime Dark: Fantasy Horror Board Game for 1-4 players
Created by Tristan Hall
A brutal experience in dark terror! Explore the town of Blackfell and uncover the sinister secrets of the eremites.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Sublime Dark Update 7 – US Tariffs
about 1 year ago
– Wed, Apr 30, 2025 at 05:51:17 AM
Hello there,
Sublime Dark is still in the development phase and not yet ready for printing, so we are continuing to monitor the US tariff situation. Far be it from me to speculate, but the China tariffs in particular don't seem sustainable in the long term, so hopefully we'll see changes soon. But either way, we're keeping all available printing and shipping options on the table until we are ready to print. And as always, we'll keep you posted as we go.
In the meantime, some good news: our most recent reprint stock of Hall or Nothing games arrived into the US before the tariffs, and we'll be announcing a tariff-free sale on those games soon, so stay tuned!
Cheers,
Tristan
Sublime Dark Update 6 – Development Continues
about 1 year ago
– Fri, Mar 28, 2025 at 05:30:25 AM
Hello there,
No game spoilers this time, just a super quick note that development continues: the first pass of the rulebook is done, most of the card decks are finished, and much of the artwork is complete.
Those of you who've been following my lengthy, rambling updates since Gloom of Kilforth will understand how hard it is for me to stay schtum throughout this process, but it's also kind of fun too. I can tell you that the backstories document for the NPCs is insanely huge, but the vast majority of that will not even make it into the game! Still, the world building for this game is unlike anything I've undertaken before, and even if you guys only see the tip of the iceberg I'm excited to see what you'll all make of it when Sublime Dark lands.
In the meantime, for an alternative Hall or Nothing fix, you can follow the continuing adventures of Agent Solo Runthroughs in the darkened depths of our awesome Dungeon Crawl Card Game Kreel Manor here:
Anyway, that's all for now, have a brilliant weekend, I hope you get to play lots of games, and let me know what you thought of the Warhammer episode of Secret Level! :D
Cheers,
Tristan
Sublime Dark Update 5 – Development Continues + Location Tiles!
over 1 year ago
– Tue, Feb 04, 2025 at 04:11:25 AM
Hello there,
For those who want to continue the Sublime Dark spoiler-free experience: development continues, we love you, and we'll see you next time! :D
Location, Location, Location!
For anyone a leetle bit curious enough to want a teeny peek behind the curtains, our main man Carlos Villas – the incredible artist responsible for illustrating the frankly disgusting Eremites, as well as many of our Ancients from the Kilforth games – has also illustrated the location tiles for Sublime Dark, delivering the haunting yet desolately beautiful setting for this game. I'd love to someday see what terrible beauty he could bring to say, a fantasy dungeon tile set, for a Dungeons of Kilforth-type game, but I digress...
One of my dreams during the development for Sublime Dark was to reveal the Harrow – the even more hellish underside of Blackfell. But logistically and technically, and gameplay-wise, it required lots of things to come together. It would also be considerably more expensive for us. But those of you who've backed us before know that we're no strangers to adding insanely cool component upgrades long after the crowdfunding campaign has already closed. This takes the pressure off posting and chasing fancy stretch goals, and gives us a real opportunity to just carefully measure out the things that we're able to include without over-stretching ourselves, and your expectations, as it were. Anywho. All this is to say that the super talented Carlos Villas has been hard at work delivering a double helping of both beautiful location tile landscape art for us, as well as his own disgustingly inimitable style of horror world landscape art, and therefore: all of the game's location tiles are now going to be double-sided. The beautiful Blackfell art is on one side, and the daemoniac 'Harrow' alternate art of each tile is now on the reverse side, along with some weird and wonderful gameplay surprises, which really allows us to mess with those poor Caro even more.
At this point I don't know which side of each tile I prefer, though I do know which side makes me feel more ill. I'm not saying that these are the coolest board game tiles in any game ever, but I will say that these are the coolest board game tiles in any game I've ever seen. Of course, if this were a Kilforth update you can bet that right now I'd be blasting you with some of those art spoilers, and part of me is dying to do just that, but, you know, there's also something just a little bit sublime about keeping you in the dark...
And that's all for today - ciao for now!
Tristan
Sublime Dark Update 4 – Happy New Year! + BackerKit!
over 1 year ago
– Mon, Jan 06, 2025 at 11:04:52 AM
Hello there, and Happy New Year!
Yes, we're still saying it 5 days later... :D I hope you had a brilliant holiday break and got to play plenty of games. We've picked up the pace now that we're back in the office once again. We're feeling charged up with new year energy and ready to tackle everything that this year promises, so without further ado, let's get to it...
BackerKit Pledge Manager Locking
We're 'soft-locking' the pledge manager in the next 2 days, which means that your orders will be locked and cards will be charged. This gives us the best heads-up on printer numbers and lets everyone know where we're up to, but if you have any issues or difficulties, as always, just email us ([email protected]) and we'll be happy to help. Plenty of you haven't completed your pledges yet, which isn't the end of the world, it just makes our job a little more arduous in the long run if you don't. So don't panic if you haven't completed your pledge yet, but if you could aim to do that by the end of January we would be really appreciative, and that way we can lock in any straggler orders at the end of this month.
Shadows of Kilforth: New Tales Crowdfunding Soon!
We will soon be launching a small crowdfunding campaign re-release for one of our lesser known Kilforth expansions Shadows of Kilforth: New Tales. I want to put your mind at ease now that it will not affect the progress of Sublime Dark in any way. We were recently able to run off another small print run of this previously sold out expansion, so it will ship out straight away once the crowdfunding campaign ends whilst Sublime Dark glides along in the background. Since New Tales never had an official crowdfunding release, we're going to open it up to new backers and/or those who might have missed it. New Tales contains some of my favourite art pieces from the Kilforth world (the box cover alone is mint!), along with 4 awesome new classes (including the awesome Ronin), 2 new Races, and loads more events, encounters and rewards, not to mention the 4 ultra tough Ancient bosses who change up the game considerably. New Tales is also cross compatible with Gloom, Shadows or Call of Kilforth, so it's a must-have for Kilforth veterans. There will be a limited amount of other Kilforth games and expansions on offer too, though the core games have now sold out in the UK/EU.
What are your top games of 2024?
It's been brilliant reading, watching, and listening to everyone's favourite games from 2024 (maybe I should do my own list), and it's been even brillianter discovering how many people got into Kreel Manor – The Dungeon Crawl Card game this last year. The BoardGameGeek podcast is always a fantastic listen, and even more fantasticer when Kreel Manor shows up in the Top 10! :D
So, what are your top games of 2024? Personally, I've been pretty hooked on Burning Banners, which is well worth checking out if you like war games and fantasy adventuring on a beautiful hand-drawn map, illustrated by the annoyingly talented game designer himself, Christopher Moeller. And Dragons Down has made a terrific attempt to modernise one of my grail games, Magic Realm.
Sayonara!
And that's all for now. I'm going to grab another excitingly delicious vegetable juice and curse Past Tristan for indulging in far too many Christmas treats. I hope you have a successful and fulfilling 2025, I look forward to bothering you with progress updates every month, and I hope that January sees you feeling refreshed and ready to play even more games.
Cheerio,
Tristan
Sublime Dark Update 3 – Merry Christmas! + BackerKit!
over 1 year ago
– Fri, Dec 06, 2024 at 10:31:21 AM
Hello there!
BackerKit
The funds have now cleared through to us from Kickstarter. So our BackerKit pledge manager is now up and running in smoke test mode. This means about 5% of you will be emailed to fill in your address details and whatnot...
You also have the opportunity to pick up the hugely discounted promo pack, or playmat, or actual Sublime Dark game if you missed any of them.
The Kickstarter discount will last until the end of December, at which point the prices will revert to RRP.
As always, if you have any issues, please email us and we'll help you out: [email protected]
Once those 5% have gone through and been processed smoothly, we'll open up the pledge manager to everybody, including late pledges if you missed the campaign altogether.
Newsletter + Future Games
The work continues, and we'll keep you posted along the way. I've had loads of questions about our upcoming games Wyvern Moor – The Dungeon Crawl Card Game (the Kreel Manor sequel) and Excalibur 4X (a brand new title). I just want to reconfirm that I'm 100% committed to Sublime Dark first and foremost. Once I'm happy that everything is in order and moving at a pace with Sublime Dark, we can look at launching our next project, at which point I'll be sure to shout about it here and via our newsletter, which you can subscribe to here:
Francesca and I want to thank you once again so much for your unwavering and lovely support and for your kind comments and messages, especially in this increasingly crowded market. We never take anything for granted, and the games I design are very niche - which is hopefully what makes them unique - so every successfully funded campaign feels like a massive victory. And Sublime Dark is as niche as they come – so thank you once again from the bottom of our hearts for making this awesome game happen! To that end, and due to its popularity, we're going to once again run the 25% off coupon for all of our games right through Christmas until the end of December, simply use the following code on any order via our website (below):
After 20 years of working in busy offices for someone else, it can sometimes feel a little disconnected working for myself whilst locked away in my office/geek-den and hidden from the outside world. So last weekend we did a demo day in our local board game cafe, The Kobold's Kettle in Lytham. These guys are doing great things for the local community – including reaching out to and bringing together lonely people – and they are thoroughly lovely people too. It's always ace to play our games with people in person, and the response was brilliant – everyone said they had a great time, and each group bought a bunch of games too.
Shadows of Kilforth even showed up at the next games night in our local pub, and I was able to play a full game of it for the first time in donkeys (3-player coop: we lost one hero but managed to take out the 3 Ancients just in time).
And that's all for now! You might not be in the first 5%, but do keep your eye out for your BackerKit invite anyway in case it hits your spam filter when it lands.
I hope you have a ruddy brilliant Christmas/holiday break and that you get to play a tonne of cool games, and we'll see you in the New Year!
