Naughty Dog has announced a partnership with tabletop game maker Themeborne, which will create the board game The Last of Us: Escape the Dark. This marks the first attempt at replicating the franchise's interactive experience in a non-video game format.
Multiple video games have received tabletop adaptations in recent years, including fellow PlayStation exclusives Bloodborne and Horizon Zero Dawn. It's a good way to potentially draw interested parties into the source material, something Sony's clearly keen on doing with several of its franchises.
Considering that the remake of the original The Last of Us is still fairly recent, and the growing interest for the upcoming HBO adaptation, this board game adaptation couldn't have been announced at a better time.
The Kickstarter for The Last of Us: Escape the Dark will go live on Tuesday, November 8. The platform has become a key funding source for board games, including the aforementioned game for Horizon.
Themeborne was founded in 2016 and came into the tabletop space with its roguelike game, Escape the Dark. Since then, the company has created a sequel, 2017's Escape the Dark Castle, and four expansion campaigns for the series.
Escape games are randomly generated, and players collaborate together (or play alone) to run through encounters using custom dice and the skills of their characters. In a three-act structure spread over 45 minutes, it sounds like a digestible and effective way to bring across the feeling of playing Naughty Dog's post-apocalyptic series.