Board game legends, Rick and Morty co-creator, Atari founder and more unite for monthly subscription box QST

A new monthly board game subscription box has taken to Kickstarter in search of the cash to make its lofty ambitions a reality.

QST, which is apparently pronounced ‘Quest’, has been created by Epic Spell Wars designer and Cryptozoic co-founder Cory Jones, and aims to bring together a trio of creative brains to create a completely original new game every month.

The talent is divided across three areas of expertise: concepts, design and art.

Some of the big names from games mentioned include Matt Hyra, Bruno Faidutti, Seiji Kanai, James Ernest, Richard Borg, Paul Peterson, Jordan Weisman, John Kovalic, Bruno Cathala and Vincent Dutrait, but there’s also video game legend and Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, fantasy author R.A. Salvatore, comic book writer and Invader Zim creator Jhonen Vasquez, and Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland in the line-up primed to put their ideas forward.

The games will largely be small titles, playing in about half an hour to 45 minutes and supporting between two and four players, although this is only a rough guide.

A big part of the draw is that the games will be collectible – the creators vow that they will have never been seen before and will never be reproduced in the same form again. Reprints aren’t out of the question completely, but will take place at least a year after the game’s launch through QST and will be missing much of the exclusive elements of the original.

The first game will be Foreclosure: Dungeon Masters Tavern, a collaboration between designer Matt Hyra and artist Robb Mommaerts based on a concept by Cory Jones. The blind auction game casts players as boss monsters trying to acquire the best loot while fending off adventurers and devaluing their rivals.

Foreclosure is set to kick off the initial 12-month run of QST in March 2018, with a 13th game planned once the series comes to an end.

The pricing works out at a reasonable $13 (£10) per game, making it $168 (£131) in total, but shipping to the UK pushes it up by a whopping $208 (£162), bringing it to $376 (£292) for the lowest-tier ‘Agent’ subscription.

The $506 (£393) ‘Archon’ tier throws in two extra copies of each game, but adds an eye-watering $624 (£485) in postage for a grand total of $1,130 (£878), while the top-level ‘Eye’ option includes extra collectibles from the team – but matches its seemingly premium offering with a $1,200 (£932) cost (not including the shipping).

QST is looking for an ambitious $600,000 (£466,000) on Kickstarter. It’s off to a slow start so far, sitting at just over $12,000 (£9,321) – perhaps a surprisingly low amount given some of the big names involved. The campaign will run until September 29th, so we’ll see if it picks up steam and manages to hit its target by then.