Sublime Dark: Fantasy Horror Board Game for 1-4 players

Sublime Dark Update 8 - UK Games Expo
over 1 year ago – Wed, Jun 04, 2025 at 08:52:22 AM

Hello there,

There's not much I can share about development at this stage, other than it continues furiously. The first Delve is currently ever so slightly too winnable in my opinion, but play-testers have mentioned that other players might like to be able to survive long enough to play some more of the game too... :D

I will say that we had an amazing time at UK Games Expo this weekend. Thanks to everyone who came by our stand to say hello and to have a gawp at Rictus the Harlequin. Yeah, his name is a bit of a spoiler, but so what – fulfilment is still aiming for around October so we've got a lot of time to fill before shipping!

It was brilliant to meet so many of you cool, cool people, and lots of you are becoming regular familiar faces at events now, which makes us feel so welcome. Several of you came from miles away, some from other countries even, including the US; and wherever you came from, it was an absolute privilege to discover that you carved out the time to check out our little ole booth. Especially with the hall size being bigger than GenCon, that was insane.

I was delighted to be able to bring Francesca and Raphael along – it was like an especially geeky Hall family holiday. As always, I wish I'd taken more photos, but here are a couple of highlights.

I'll be back soon with more info about our upcoming sale, as well as our new solo-able storytelling game, Night of Wolves, which we previewed at the Expo. But that's all for now – my voice is gradually returning, the burning in my feet and back is easing up, and I think I'm just about ready for tonight's session of Burning Banners at our local game night. Have a glorious rest of the week, and stay awesome you beauties!

Cheers,

Tristan

Sublime Dark Update 7 – US Tariffs
over 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
over 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

 

https://boardgamegeek.com/blog/12153/blogpost/169233/bgg-podcast-59-the-best-games-we-played-in-2024-wi

 

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