Now, how could a real-time experience like this possibly be translated into board game form? I’m not sure if DEI’s designer, Tommaso Battista, intended for this, but he’s made perhaps the best battle royale-adjacent board game I’ve encountered so far. These games, in spite of their huge maps, often feel claustrophobic and frantic at the same time, and every decision you make matters. On top of this, the map is constantly shrinking, bringing players into more and more conflict. For the unfamiliar, battle royale games are typically a first-person shooter where a player is dropped into a huge landscape without any weapons or tools, and needs to run around and collect weapons, ammo, and equipment to be able to survive the other players. It’s incontestable that the battle royale has made a splash in the world of video games, and there have been attempts to replicate the formula into board game form.
I’m happy to say that DEI lives up to the promise of its very cool map. There’s nothing more appealing than a good map, and few things are as disappointing as a map that doesn’t measure up to its potential. Scramble for resources in a snowy wasteland in DEI, an exciting game from one of the designers of Barrage.