For many years, Monster Hunter has been the definitive over-the-top monster fighting experience. It's all about humans picking up massively oversized weapons and fighting equally oversized monsters. There's tons of fans of this kind of monster fighting experience, so it's no surprise that the monster hunting model is expanding into other media. Although Monster Hunter World: The Board Game is gearing up for a Kickstarter soon, there's also a new board game in development that's clearly a Monster Hunter love letter. It's called Primal: The Awakening, and it does everything Monster Hunter does in a tabletop experience, from the monsters to the weapons.
Primal: The Awakening is being made by Reggie Games, an Italian board game newcomer that previously found success with ELO Darkness, a strategy card game inspired by MOBAs. Reggie Games claims to be fascinated by tactics and dedicated to games based on strategy. Primal: The Awakening channels the same multiplayer spirit of Monster Hunter by encouraging players to work together to best all kinds of different monsters. Remarkably, Primal: The Awakening even offers a campaign, which is sure to see players progressing through more and more difficult hunts and constantly meeting more outlandish monsters. It's everything Monster Hunter is built to be.
The Pillars of Monster Hunter
One of the chief principles of Monster Hunter is that every monster is unique. Players never know what to expect out of a new monster and are always forced to figure out how they attack, what their fighting patterns are, and what the best way to beat them is. Primal: The Awakening works the same way. There's lots of monsters in the game's world of Thyrea, and in order to get through the campaign, players will have to work together to figure out what to do in every new challenge. These monsters are even getting all kinds of broad figurines to help players get immersed in the world by admiring the monster designs.
On the player side, there's lots of Monster Hunter comparisons to be made too. Monster Hunter is famous for its oversized weapons made from monster parts, as well as elaborate suits of armor made from a hunter's trophies. Over the course of a Primal campaign, players will craft new gear in the same way as Monster Hunter. New equipment is represented by changes in each player's deck, resulting in new playstyles and strategies. Customization is everything in Monster Hunter, and the same spirit lives on in Primal: The Awakening.
Primal's Possibilities
Primal: The Awakening offers everything that fans of Monster Hunter could ask for in a tabletop experience. Odds are many fans of the franchise have tried to adapt it into Dungeons and Dragons and other tabletop RPGs, but now there's a more direct parallel on the market. It'd probably even be feasible to use Primal: The Awakening's mechanics to play an actual Monster Hunter tabletop experience. Once players have taken the time to get accustomed, they can make up mechanics for the Aptonoth, the Rathalos, and everything in between. Maybe there could even be an official Monster Hunter expansion someday, crossing over with its own board game.
Reggie Games has some good news for any interested players: it just had an incredibly successful Kickstarter campaign to fund the game. Reggie Games only had a goal of about 150,000 euros, but fans of the concept have pledged over two million euros in total. Primal: The Awakening has way more funds to work with than its developers apparently ever dared to dream of. That means there might be a whole lot more Primal in the future than initially planned. Reggie Games has the funding to design many more cards, figures, and possible expansions for the game. Monster Hunter might already have an official board game in development, but as far as indie parallels are concerned, nothing quite compares to Primal.
Primal: The Awakening is in development.