(Ubisoft Entertainment)

Assassin’s Creed is set to become the next video game franchise to make the switch to tabletop.

Brotherhood of Venice is a new miniatures board game that has launched on Kickstarter and has already raised over £400,000.

It joins the many other video game giants that have launched their own board games including Fallout, Tomb Raider and Horizon Zero Dawn.

We were able to speak to the game designer Thibaud de la Touanne who has previously worked on the board game V-Commandos, as well as the story designer Fabrice Lamidey who was involved with Nephilim.

Some of the miniatures available in the Kickstarter (Ubisoft Entertainment)

The game has been in development for 18 months which has included a lot of testing and refinement to the gameplay.

Living up to the reputation of a popular franchise like Assassin’s Creed is likely to be daunting for any game designer, but the developers are confident it will still have the same feel as the video game series.

(Ubisoft Entertainment)

They admitted that they felt a lot of pressure but added ‘thankfully, we are fans ourselves and have also worked on the franchise before as employees of Ubisoft, so we have very good vision of the fans’ expectations.

‘We are fans of board games and fans of Assassin’s Creed so we basically targeted ourselves.’

Speaking about the process they said ‘We want to make people jump into the game almost as quickly as they do in a video game.

‘Fans will find a lot of the video game in the board game. We want to capture the essence of Assassin’s Creed and transfer it to the tabletop.’

(Ubisoft Entertainment)

Kickstarter has started to dominate a lot of the board game scene over the last few years, particular when it comes to producing games for already established brands.

Batman and Power Ranger miniatures games have recently been huge successes on the website, as well as tabletop games based on Fallout and Horizon Zero Dawn.

When asked about their decision to use Kickstarter as way of distributing their game they said: ‘Being an independent and small but highly motivated studio, we need the direct contact with the fans.

‘For such an ambitious project we want to be able to include as much of the fans’ desires and comments in our game. Kickstarter is one of the only platforms that allow this.’

This level of interaction has certainly been the case so far in the campaign with nearly 3000 comments already on the Kickstarter page from various backers offering comments and opinions, and the team behind the game have been very interactive with backers.

There are also plenty of Kickstarter stretch-goals that can be unlocked when they reach certain funding milestones including more miniatures and cards for the game.

(Ubisoft Entertainment)One issue that might stop some video gamers from making the leap to a board game such as this could be the price tag.

The pledge level to get the game has been set at $158/£93 plus shipping costs, which is reasonable considering the number of miniatures and other items that are included in the box but it’s a lot of money to commit to a project that won’t be completed for another year and a half.

The estimated delivery date of the game is June 2020 which is a long time for backers to wait.

Explaining the reason for the lengthy waiting time the developers said: ‘We are trying to be very honest with our schedule. Manufacturing such a huge game takes at least 6 months.

We also pride ourselves in delivering well balanced, well tested games with top quality components. These things don’t come quickly, we would rather do it well than fast.’

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood of Venice is available to back on Kickstarter until Thursday 6 December.