The enormously popular webcomic, Penny Arcade, has spawned plenty of projects outside of the realm of thrice-a-week jpegs. Perhaps you've heard of PAX? Or Child's Play? Or the downloadable RPG series, "Penny Arcade Adventures: On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness"? Seems the company is continuing to branch out, but this time they'll be focusing on a whole new realm: board games. Mike Krahulik, one of the two creative heads of the company, revealed today that they're teaming up with Cyrptozoic Entertainment on a new board game, based on their popular miniseries, "The Lookouts."
For those unfamiliar, "The Lookouts" is set in a high fantasy world, full of giant owl beasts, orcs and the like. Also in this world is an Boy Scouts-esque organization, The Lookouts, which serves to train the youngest inhabitants on how to deal with these dangerous fantasy beasts. It's an intriguing mix of charming, youthful adventure and terrifying danger. You know, like when "Land Before Time" was still good.
"The Lookouts" game will blend traditional board game mechanics with pen and paper RPGs, as players will be able to select their tiny adventurer and customize them with different stats and abilities as they complete objectives.
To prep for the release of the board game, Penny Arcade will be releasing a digital comic series this fall. The board game is scheduled for release sometime in early 2012.
Anyone who has been to a PAX convention knows just how important tabletop gaming is to the folks behind Penny Arcade. It'll be interesting to see how successful they are with this new venture. "Rainslick" showed promise with solid writing and story, but didn't quite deliver with the best RPG gameplay. Here's hoping they have a bit more luck in the board game realm.