Street Masters Reprint On Kickstarter

Fans of the Street Masters board game have had to deal with the fact that the game has been out of print for a long long time. Steamforged Games, the company that purchased the Street Masters license from its previous publisher, has changed that. They’ve launched a new Kickstarter campaign on February 21, 2024 that, as of this writing, has raised over $300,000.

Street Masters is a cooperative board game designed by Adam and Brady Sadler. The core mechanisms in the game emulate the beat ’em up video games of old. That is, you choose a fighter, engage hordes of enemies, and duke it out against a boss to beat a given scenario. If you enjoyed games like Double Dragon, arcade brawlers like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or Final Fight, this Street Masters reprint should be right up your alley.

If you choose to back this Kickstarter campaign, you can choose from different reward tiers. There’s the all-in tier (which costs a decent chunk of change) that gets you the core Street Masters game along with three expansions, including Lament of the Blood Moon, their newest expansion. But seeing how much it can cost, the best bang for your buck is to purchase the Core Street Masters game along with the first expansion, Street Masters Aftershock.

Street Masters’ Crowdfunding Caveats

Admittedly, Street Masters has never had the best luck in the crowdfunding arena. Its previous publisher, Blacklist Games, has been having financial issues for quite some time. It got so bad that when they attempted a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo for their third expansion, Tide of the Dragon, they succeeded in raising over $280K, but were unable to fulfill the orders. With so many issues going on, Steamforged Games stepped in and acquired the board game line and its corresponding IP from Blacklist.

With Street Masters now in the hands of Steamforged, fans can take solace in one aspect: Steamforged Games has a history of actually fulfilling their Kickstarter campaigns. They’ve done so with their campaigns for Dark Souls, Bardsung, and Horizon Zero Dawn. So if deliverability is the issue, they’re pretty good on that front.

What’s a bit more concerning is the fact that many of their games are hit and miss. Their Dark Souls board game has gotten comments to the effect of having great minis, but a bad rulebook and slow, grindy gameplay. Monster Hunter was a middling affair that never quite knocks it out of the park and Godtear was split, appealing to some but not others.

In the case of Street Masters, the core game and the first two expansions are set in stone from a design perspective. Steamforged also says that Adam and Brady Sadler are both involved in the Lament of the Blood Moon expansion. We hope that’s really the case given the split reception that their other games have received. Because of that, if you’re looking for the surest bet, the Core Street Masters Rise of the Kingdom and the Aftershock expansion are the way to go.