Into The Dead is a successful mobile game from company PikPok and they have been on Kickstarter looking to find the funding for a board game version of their game. With just over two weeks left on the campaign, PikPok talked with us a little more about the game and their ideas behind bringing it to the tabletop.

Make sure to check out the Weekender HERE where we also talked more about the game and the premise behind it.

Ben: Tell us a little bit about the board game to get started!

PikPok: Into the Dead: The Board Game is a miniatures board game for two-to-four players set in the zombie apocalypse world of the mobile games Into the Dead and Into the Dead 2.

The game design is by Trishula Entertainment, and the publisher is PikPok, who developed and published the original mobile games for iOS and Android.

B: So PikPok is releasing their own board game based on their mobile games?

P: Yes! It’s common to see licensed board games on Kickstarter, but pretty unusual to see a port created by the same people who developed the original video game.

We saw this not just as a port, but a way to expand the gameplay options for fans, to extend the world and lore, and also to use our skills as artists and game developers in a whole new creative way. It’s great that Kickstarter helps enable this project to come to life.

B: However, this is PikPok’s first board game?

P: Yes it is. To make sure we did this right we partnered up with some really experienced people, board game and miniatures experts, to make sure we approached everything in the right way. Trishula Entertainment’s designers have worked on more than 100 board games, and that experience has been invaluable.

We also worked with a New Zealand studio Scale Studios who specialises in miniatures to consult on our miniatures sculpts and make sure they would work for manufacture and at a small size.

B: We heard that you did all your own 3D sculpting? What was that process like?

P: We had a lot of sculpted characters in the video games, however, these were never going to be easily transferred into the board game. The level of detail and exaggeration of detail needed to be completely altered to work at the right scale.

The most fun was figuring out the poses, and deciding how to take characters that had always been seen in motion and figure out how to encapsulate their personalities with the right pose.

B: How many miniatures are there?

P: There are two versions of the game on Kickstarter. One comes with four characters, four dogs, and sixty zombies. We started with three different zombie poses and are expanding to six. The “Apocalypse” version of the game will come with six characters, six dogs, and 120 zombies in the six poses.

B: It comes with dog miniatures!?!

P: We’ve had so many excited comments about the dogs! We love them, people love them. Every character in the game has their own loyal “canine companion”, and each companion has a unique skill. Each companion also comes with a custom painted card as well.

B: How did you work on bringing all of the art for the game to life?

P: This was where we could especially bring our skills to the table. PikPok games are known for having really high quality graphics, and our art team is phenomenally talented.

Boards, dashboards, and cards all come with custom illustrations that we have all worked on inhouse so that the style matches up with the mobile game inspiration.

B: How long has the project been in development?

P: The first Into the Dead game was released in 2012, and after its initial success, there’s been a question for a long time as to whether this is something we’d like to do. After we released Into the Dead 2 in 2017, we started really working out the details, and that’s when we partnered with Trishula.

B: How did that partnership come about?

P: One of Trishula’s designers, Chris Cervantes, was actually a designer on the original Into the Dead all the way back in 2012.

He’s been working in the board games space since, so it seemed a natural fit to have someone who really knew the story, world, and gameplay, inside and out.

B: One of the things that really seems key is that the board game really feels like the mobile game...

P: Yes this was so important to us and Trishula. They’ve absolutely nailed that rushed, frenetic feel of the mobile game, where you’re racing through the landscape and have to make tactical decisions as you go.

The great thing about that approach is that it’s turned this into a zombie game that really feels different from every other zombie game out there.

B: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

P: Just that it’s been a real pleasure seeing all the positive responses so far on Kickstarter! It’s been great working with such a passionate community as we develop the project and work towards bringing it to life.

We wish the team at PikPok the best when it comes to their Kickstarter campaign. Being new on the scene and developing a board game for the first time is not easy but it looks like they are trying to cover all of the bases when it comes to Into The Dead.

Gameplay Video

If you're interested in gameplay you can see a deeper dive into this from Man Vs Meeple below...

The campaign currently has around two weeks left on Kickstarter and the team has been vocal in the comments alongside a series of updates.

Have you had a peek at Into The Dead: The Board Game?