IDW has announced today that it will release The X-Files board game this July. This is going to be a serious designer board game, designed to take between 60 and 90 minutes to complete. The best part? It will see two to five people playing as Mulder, Scully, and the X-Files team as they uncover global conspiracies and threats, working together against an additional player who will control the Smoking Man and the Syndicate and seek to take out the Agents.

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IDW Publishing and Pandasaurus Games are taking the game seriously, too. They have hired on acclaimed designer Kevin Wilson, who's behind tons of incredible strategy games like Arkham Horror, Descent, and Civilization, to work on the game. Comic book artist menton3 (Memory Collectors, The X-Files: Season 10) will return to the series and provide art direction for the game, as well as the box art you see above.

"To me, there's no more exciting title than The X-Files," says IDW Director of New Business, Jerry Bennington in a statement. "Who wouldn't want the chance to play as the wise cracking Fox Mulder or the incredibly intelligent Dana Scully? And what show created more classic villains than The X-Files? I still remember the first time I laid eyes on Flukeman, now we'll give fans the chance to lose sleep all over again!"

Another bonus- the game will focus on the first three seasons of the show, which are pretty much universally considered to be some of the best of the series. It's going to be great to see which episodes are incoproated- let's hope that classics like "Humbug" and "Squeeze" are included.

The X-Files game will hit this July with a suggested retail price of $59.99. The chits are out there.