At this point being into the digital versions of Blood Bowl is basically masochism. In the 1990s MicroLeague published a version that was so cheap and nasty I said, “to call it barebones would be an insult to skeletons.” Cyanide picked up the licence after that, releasing two decent adaptations whose DLC model was controversial at the time but seems blessedly sensible compared to Blood Bowl 3, a live-service seasonal microtransaction confusatron that’s basically a poster child for “look how they massacred my boy” memes.
Blood Bowl 3 was published by Nacon, which has filed for insolvency and left strategy specialists Slitherine to pick up the ball. Cyanide’s still the developer, but there’s room to hope the next iteration, called Warhammer Blood Bowl, won’t be another own goal.
According to Marco Alessandro Minoli, director of publishing at Slitherine, “Our goal with Warhammer Blood Bowl is simple: we want this to become the definitive Blood Bowl videogame—not just at launch, but for years to come. Our vision is to support and expand it over time, turning it into a living, constantly evolving experience, just as we’ve successfully done with other Warhammer titles such as Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector and Warhammer 40,000: Gladius.”
Rather than being a whole new game it’s an update of Blood Bowl 3 to bring it in line with the tabletop Blood Bowl’s current “third season” edition, adding two new teams: Tomb Kings (undead Egyptians) and Bretonnians (Monty Python French). There’s also going to be a “Rumble Mode” where teams of seven players face off in faster matches, which we’ll be able to test in a demo Slitherine says is due at the end of summer.
Anyone who owns Blood Bowl 3 will get Warhammer Blood Bowl for free, and any additional teams and cosmetics you’ve bought will carry over. Which rather suggests they’re keeping the model where we have to buy teams separately and also the customizations to make individual players distinct. But if it didn’t find a way to hurt us, it wouldn’t be Blood Bowl. The full release is scheduled to come out in fall.
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