IDW Tasks Top Team to Tackle Design for Their Initial Tabletop Game

IDW Games has selected game designers Thomas Vande Ginste and Wolf Plancke as the creative team that will bring Kill Shakespeare to tabletops in 2014.

The design team, best known for the sold-out critically acclaimed Yedo, will deliver a co-operative board game that pits several of the Bard’s most popular characters together in a struggle to protect the land from King Richard and Lady Macbeth.

“As a game designer, you couldn’t ask for more rich material to draw from than that of William Shakespeare himself,” said Plancke. “The wonderful universe that Connor McCreary and Anthony Del Col have created by combining and twisting their favorite bits of Shakespeare’s works into something united and alive is an even more inviting playground. Thomas and I are incredibly excited to deliver a gaming experience as rich and satisfying as the plays and graphic novels it will be based on.”

Designed to be a “semi-cooperative”-style board game, players will unite to battle against evil forces controlled by board mechanics, while still jockeying to come out as the individual leader on the scoreboard. The design and content of the game will pull heavily from source material created by the Kill Shakespeare graphic-novel team. However, those unfamiliar with the works shouldn’t feel left out, as the board game will act as the perfect entry point to those unfamiliar with Kill Shakespeare.

“We’re working hard to make sure the game has everything fans of the comics love, but doesn’t just re-hash material they’ve already experienced,” said Kill Shakespeare editor Tom Waltz. “Connor McCreary and Anthony Del Col are both intimately involved with the game development process. Thomas and Wolf are being given our full support to use as much of the Kill Shakespeare world as possible. They’re officially friends of the bard now!”

With a 2014 summer release planned, IDW Games looks to be putting their best foot forward with this title. The previously announced art team of Dave Dorman and J.K. Woodward should give Kill Shakespeare a firm advantage in the art department, and this new addition of a high-quality design team loudly delivers the message that the publisher is here not just to play, but to win.

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