Crowdfunded Dark Souls board game smashes £50,000 Kickstarter goal in just 3 minutes

Dark Souls: The Board Game has passed its crowd-funding goal on Kickstarter, amassing £440,000 at the time of writing and obliterating its £50,000 target in just three minutes. Based on the popular video game series, the board game is being developed by Steamforged Games – the team behind the medieval football game Guild Ball – in partnership with the game's publisher Bandai Namco.

The project has been backed by 5,050 people so far, with 26 days still remaining before the campaign ends on 16 May. As the project continues, and stretch goals will be reached that include new add-ons backers can purchase by increasing their pledge amount.

Set in the Dark Souls universe, the game is described as a "combat exploration game" designed for one to four players that requires you to "explore dangerous locations, discover and defeat enemies, and collect equipment and treasures before ultimately facing the boss in an epic fight to the death".

Players can go through the game solo or with friends and choose from a "number of core Dark Souls character classes. It also features the series' iconic bonfire, where players can level up, rest and head back into the Dark Souls world.

However, doing so will reset the world, bringing back all enemies you have defeated - just like the game. The detailed miniatures will include the series' most formidable bosses like Ornstein, Smough and The Dancer of the Boreal Valley.

Steamforged explains how the card-based battles will play out in the YouTube video, embedded below.

According to Steamforged, the board game will adopt the series' signature punishing level of difficulty. Scheduled for delivery in April 2017, a single copy of the board game will cost £80 plus shipping.

Dark Souls 3, the latest installment in the epic Souls franchise, was released worldwide on 12 April for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One as the publisher's fastest selling game ever.