Explained D&D board game Tomb of Annihilation is being pulled from Steam

From 2010 to 2019, Wizards of the Coast developed a series of co-op board games based on the Dungeons & Dragons Adventure System rules. Each was essentially a condensed D&D adventure that could be completed in a couple of hours. Most were based on old and new D&D modules, such as Castle Ravenloft, Temple of Elemental Evil, and Tomb of Annihilation. BKOM Studios converted the last one into the videogame Tales from Candlekeep: Tomb of Annihilation, which was released on Steam in 2017.

Unfortunately, due to licencing restrictions, BKOM Studios has stated that Tomb of Annihilation will be removed from Steam on May 20. “While the game or any of the additional material will no longer be available for purchase on that date,” the developer says, “players who have the game in their Steam library will still be able to play it and enjoy all of its content.”

In Tomb of Annihilation, four adventurers—or five with the DLC—travel through the jungles and dungeons of Chult in the Forgotten Realms, looking for a way to break the “death curse,” which not only prevents raise dead spells from working, but also causes anyone who has been resurrected by magic to slowly waste away. (One of the adventurers is Dragonbait, a figure familiar to D&D fans from Azure Bonds.

The D&D module was a tribute to the older Tomb of Horrors, initially released in 1978 and developed by D&D co-creator Gary Gygax as a competitive dungeon for convention play. It was essentially a set of traps designed to kill off player-characters, and getting it into print and into the hands of Dungeon Masters all around the world resulted in a lot of agony and total party fatalities. However, it was a long time ago, so we can joke about it now.