Escape from New York is getting a board game from Descent: Journeys in the Dark creator
A piece of Pliss.
John Carpenter’s cult action movie Escape from New York is being adapted into a board game by the designer of Descent: Journeys in the Dark, Arkham Horror and more.
Escape from New York, of course, is Carpenter’s well-loved 1981 film following the attempts of Snake Plissken - namesake of Metal Gear Solid hero Solid Snake - to rescue the president of the United States from the Manhattan-wide prison in just 24 hours.
The movie takes place in a crime-ridden USA set in the dystopian future of… 1997, and stars frequent Carpenter collaborator Kurt Russell as the soldier-turned-criminal alongside fellow screen legends Donald Pleasence, Harry Dean Stanton, Lee Van Cleef, Adrienne Barbeau and Isaac Hayes. Escape from New York was followed by the less widely-loved Escape from LA in the nineties.
The Escape from New York board game will be based directly on the events of Carpenter's film, putting players in the role of four of its characters - Russell’s Snake, Stanton’s Brain, Barbeau’s Maggie or Ernest Borgnine’s taxi driver, known as “Cabbie” - as they try to retrieve the president and the top-secret cassette tape in his possession.
Kevin Wilson, the original creator of fantasy dungeon-crawler Descent: Journeys in the Dark and co-designer of the Arkham Horror and Fury of Dracula remakes, Cosmic Encounter’s modern edition, Doom board game, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shadows of the Past and more, will design the upcoming board game’s gameplay.
Publishing the game will be Pendragon Game Studio, which previously adapted Carpenter’s seminal horror flick The Thing into a board game, as well as releasing games such as the ‘80s horror movie-inspired Last Friday. The Thing has also been adapted as the non-Pendragon board game Infection at Outpost 31, while Escape from New York previously saw a tabletop adaptation from original Dungeons & Dragons maker TSR in 1981.
Escape From New York’s new board game will be crowdfunded this winter, Pendragon announced, with a release date and pricing yet to be announced.