Discworld board game Ankh-Morpork is getting a remake based on Terry Pratchett’s Victorian inspirations

Martin Wallace’s adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld universe, Ankh-Morpork, is making an unlikely return.

Ankh-Morpork was the first in a planned trilogy based on the beloved fantasy author’s novels, released back in 2011 and followed two years later by a second instalment, The Witches.

However, the Brass, Age of Steam and A Few Acres of Snow designer was forced to cancel his plans for the third entry in the series following Pratchett’s death in 2015.

In the years since, the rights to Discworld reverted and Wallace’s studio Treefrog Games closed, seemingly closing the book on the games’ future.

That was until this week, when publisher Phalanx announced that it plans to revive Ankh-Morpork as a new, non-Discworld title called Nanty Narking.

While it may not be officially set in Pratchett’s universe, Nanty Narking will pay ample tribute to the origins of its predecessor, relocating the drama of factions attempting to control a sprawling city to Victorian London and featuring some of the both real and fictional people that inspired Pratchett’s writing.

Specifically, the game is soaked in the atmospheric prose of Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Coyle and Charles Dickens, said to be two of the greatest influences on the Ankh-Morpork novels.

What’s more, the game’s places, characters and events haven’t been plucked at random, but correspond to specific reimaginings of classic English literature by Pratchett, which makes it a fascinating blend of history and semi-biography.

The gameplay is suggested to remain largely untouched, as players place down their characters and buildings to exert control over the city. The 90-plus miniatures in the box are now based on true London inhabitants, with the basics of picking a card to play and performing its actions still at the heart of each hour-long match. However, Nanty Narking is said to include more player goals than in Ankh-Morpork, with the hope of giving more variety and routes to victory than in the original.

Nanty Narking is due to come to Kickstarter sometime in the next few months.