The new cooperative roguelike board game from the creator of Wingspan was inspired by Breath of the Wild and will contain over 1,700 unique cards.

Stonemaier Games' new project will be a cooperative roguelike board game with a wide appeal: the box will contain over 1,700 cards with unique illustrations. Vantage is inspired by the exploratory freedom of Breath of the Wild and will be released to the public sometime in 2025.

The creator of Wingspan, Scythe, and Libertalia recently provided the first details about Vantage, calling it a “roguelike, co-op, open-world adventure game” from studio co-founder Jamey Stegmaier. Between one and six players will emergency evacuate their spaceship as they head to a previously unexplored planet. Scattered across its surface, they must now explore the alien ecology and geography to reunite with their crew.

Players will have “total freedom” of exploration thanks to over 1,700 cards that depict interconnected locations, resources, tools, and other facets of the planet from a first-person perspective. Valentina Filic, Sören Meding, and Emilien Rotival provided unique illustrations for each card, which, given Stonemaier Games’ recent stance against the use of AI art in its products, is a mammoth task.

As they explore, players will be able to communicate with each other and offer limited assistance, but they’ll be largely on their own when it comes to traversing dangerous terrain or facing threats – you won’t know the exact location of anyone but your own character, for example. The theme is a mix of sci-fi and fantasy elements that we won’t see until later in development. The only piece of art shows a mix of biomes – a volcano, rugged mountains, and verdant plains – through the battered and scratched visor of a spacesuit. Metal coins sold as an upgrade for the board game look like bits of circuitry and metal tokens.

Stegmaier mentioned in the dev diary video that he didn’t intend to create a roguelike board game, but he did want Vantage to eschew campaign-style gameplay in favor of a self-contained experience: when a character wins, dies, or is eliminated from the game, all of their progress and cards go with them. Players must choose their routes carefully, and each playthrough should create a unique perspective (or advantage) from the cards added to their boards.

Vantage is reportedly nearly finished with playtesting and will begin production sometime later this year. Stegmaier said he won’t go through the company’s standard 10-day preparation process for launch, but will instead release more details through design diaries throughout 2024 and 2025. Vantage will also be a full, out-of-the-box experience with no plans for expansion just yet.