Wingspan maker’s new cooperative, roguelike board game was inspired by Breath of the Wild and will contain over 1,700 unique cards

Stonemaier Games’ newest project will be a cooperative, roguelike board game with a heck of a hook: the box will contain more than 1,700 cards with unique illustrations. Vantage draws inspiration from Breath of the Wild’s exploratory freedom and will publicly launch sometime in 2025.

The maker of Wingspan, Scythe and Libertalia recently supplied the first details about Vantage, calling it an “open-world, cooperative, roguelike adventure game” from studio co-founder Jamey Stegmaier. Between one and six players will emergency evacuate their spacefaring vessel while en-route to a previously unexplored planet. Scattered across its surface, they must now explore the alien ecology and geography to reunite with your crew.

Players will have “complete freedom” of exploration powered by over 1,700 cards that show 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 every single card, which given Stonemaier Games’ recent stance against using AI art in their products, is a colossal undertaking.

While exploring, players will be able to communicate with one another and offer limited aid, but they are largely on their own when it comes to traversing hazardous terrain or tackling threats - you won’t know the exact location of anyone but your own character, for example. The theme is a mix of science fiction and fantastical elements that we won’t see until later in development. The one piece of art shows a mix of biomes–a volcano, craggy mountains and verdant plains - through the beaten and scratched visor of a spacesuit. Metal coins sold as an upgrade to the board game look like bits of circuitry and metal chits.

Stegmaier mentioned in the dev diary video that he didn’t intend to create a roguelike board game when, but he did want Vantage to avoid campaign style play in favour of a self-contained experience - when a character wins, dies or otherwise is removed from play, all of their progress and cards go with them. Players should choose their routes carefully, and every run should craft a unique perspective (or vantage) from the cards added to their tableaus.

Vantage is reportedly nearly finished with playtesting and will head into production some time later this year. Stegmaier said he will not be doing the company’s standard 10-day ramp up to launch but will instead spool more details out through design diaries throughout 2024 and into 2025. Vantage will also be a complete experience in-box with no plans for expansions at present.