Arydia: The Paths We Dare Tread

There's been a resurgence in trying to capture the "open-world" experience prevalent in video games and bring them to board games. The success of Gloomhaven, The 7th Continent, and more recently Sleeping Gods makes it clear that it's certainly possible to achieve it. So when the designer for a well liked sci-fi sandbox game, Xia: Legends of a Drift System, launched a campaign for Arydia: The Paths We Dare Tread, a fantasy based open world sandbox game - it made waves in the board game community, raising an initial $1.3 million from the campaign.

I had played Xia before, thought it was okay. However, I was very much drawn in from what the game was promising through their campaign. The flexible character creation with painted minatures and interchangable pieces was certainly unique. And I've been wowed before by large exploration campaign games, ISS Vanguard being an excellent example. At first I just went in just too follow with the pledge manager but eventually I did splurge on going for a copy for myself. It very much took a while to arrive, campaign ending in 2021 and eventually reaching us at the start of 2025, but so far I've been really impressed.

Unboxing, it felt very reminiscient of Gloomhaven: a lot of separated boxes and things warning "only open when instructed to do so". Thankfully, a lot of the organization is already done for you: no sorting through cards and needing to arrange them, you just need to slot in the dividers as instructed. It's honestly really quick to get started to play by following their Quick Start guide which acts as a guided intro to the majority of the game's mechanics as you play.

The game is kind of akin to a structured D&D-lite, skill checks are d20 rolls with stats and bonuses that are common for RPGs. You can even write your own name onto a tile to give a little more personalization over the handful of lore-accurate names they offer, which is a nice touch.

I'd also say it seems to borrow a lot of elements across many other games I've played:

• Combat is a lot like Sleeping Gods, where you're puzzling out how to place wounds on an enemy efficently. Limited action economy on your turns and then enemies go based on a simple AI deck.

• Exploration maps remind me of what I've experienced in ISS Vanguard and Etherfields, with places able to change based on your actions, having to deal with events and enemies in the area.
• The overworld traversal has a terrain mechanic with road events that is similar to Lands of Galzyr, where you check for an icon to see how a particular travel card will affect you.

• The miniatures stored in advent calendar like boxes makes me think of how Oathsworn: Into the Deepwood does storage for the large plastic minis.

But even for all these similar elements, I find it still manages to feel fresh and makes them its own thing. I know in the recent Dice Tower review, they praised the game for how much thoughtfulness was done for the game and it definitely shows through how well crafted and produced this game is. And I don't simply mean in terms of quality but also from the way the game guides players and how nearly every card has an FAQ on the back related to that specific thing versus making it a giantic book, it's just massively impressive. I think other games in the future should look to Arydia as an example for how to onboard players and organically provide info and rules.

I played through the tutorial and having just scratched the surface I am wanting to dive in and explore more of this game. I get the similar desire that I got from ISS Vanguard where I just wanted to sit and binge through the campaign. We'll see how it goes, but I'm feeling confident Arydia will deliver on the promise of adventure.