Announced during Gen Con 2018, an official Horizon

Steamforged said that they’ve actually been developing the game since before Horizon Zero Dawn even released on PS4, and that they’ve been working directly with Sony and Guerilla Games for at least two years.

First Look at Horizon Zero Dawn: The Board Game's Amazing Miniatures 16 IMAGES

Steamforged says that its story will be set after the events of the video game and DLC, and feature main characters such as Aloy as event cards that can be encountered. While the developers also initially told us that the game will be canon within the greater story, they followed up later to clarify that this wasn't the case. (See the update at the bottom of the page for more details.)

“ The miniatures are gorgeous recreations of Horizon's robotic creatures, with the Thunderjaw being absolutely massive.

We didn’t get a chance to play the board game, but Steamforged gave us a breakdown of how it plays and said they are extremely happy with how it recreates the experience of the game. It’s a cooperative game where players go on stealthy hunts together but are also competing to get the highest score of the group.

The whole game is estimated to take about an hour and a half to two hours, and a single session will be a series of five or so hunts that get progressively harder. You pick a class with a unique deck of skills at the start, then replace worse cards for better ones as you get stronger, before trying to take down a final giant creature.

And good gravy can they be giant. We got an early glimpse at prototypes of the miniatures that will be used, and they are gorgeous recreations of the robotic creatures from Horizon -- Guerrilla gave Steamforged the actual 3D models to use as reference. Those show up on a modular board that changes with each fight, which are tactical with an emphasis on stealth like the video game.

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The most impressive miniature (if you can call it that) by far was the enormous Thunderjaw figure, which was likely a foot long. It made the tiny hunter model look downright miniscule, but even the smaller ones sport an impressive amount of detail. The Thunderjaw could honestly just be a collector’s item apart from the game.

The Horizon Zero Dawn board game will be launching a Kickstarter campaign later this year to gain visibility and raise production funds. Steamforged is also looking forward to working with the community and fans to figure out what exactly people want to see in it.

For more of our coverage from Gen Con 2018, check out IGN's tabletop page , where you can see everything from the show and more.

Update 8/3/18: This article initially stated that developer Steamforged Games told us that the Horizon Zero Dawn board game was canon within the video game's story, and that Guerrilla Games was even referring to it as the next Horizon Zero Dawn game. Steamforged later followed up with IGN to clarify the statements they had made. The said that the latter statement was more meant to convey that Guerilla is dedicating so much time and effort helping Steamforged with the board game that it is essentially being like the next game, not that it literally is. Steamforged also said that "the board game obviously isn’t the next Horizon Zero Dawn and whilst the fiction remains true to the world and characters of Horizon Zero Dawn, it isn’t canon." The article has been updated to reflect this.

Tom Marks is IGN's PC Editor and pie maker. You can follow him on Twitter