Dark Future

Is super awesome. This page however, is not. It needs help. Read some of the books. Seriously - there is a book series published under the collective "Dark Future" heading that's still easily available on Amazon, and for cheap - give them a read, they are good, stupid, fun: Ninja killer Ferrari nuns from Rome. Demon credit cards. Machine guns on every car. Psycho killer chick protagonists and a native american hero named Two-Dogs-Fucking. Elvis is a Special Forces veteran mercenary.

None of that was a joke. Seriously, this game is sick and so is its fluff. As well being Mad Max AF, it also has a strong Fallout 3/4 feel (in terms of its alternate time line, radiation everywhere, taking place in fucked up cities, gribblies in the Wasteland vibe). I guess you could also watch Death Race for inspiration, in that the game is based heavily around modified cars blasting seven kinds of hell out of each other with bolted-on machine guns. GW discontinued it when they decided to focus solely on Warhammer, and when they realised everyone was just using converted Matchbox cars rather than their own bespoke models.

Check out the actual Wikipedia page - it has a surprisingly huge amount of info on the fluff.

Game Play

The game itself takes the form of a 2+ player board game, with the board itself being made up of straight or curved track segments, which players set up to form a customisable playing area. The track segments are then split into lanes (which each have a speed limit), and boxes - these determine how far players move each turn. The faster you move, the more actions a player can take - but, if you take a corner section to quickly, physics kick in and you (probably) kick the bucket.

There are/were lots of car customisation options, and GW later released rules for pedestrian combat focused on gangs - but this sucked and should be disregarded. Dark Future is all about the cars.

The Books

Route 666 short story anthology, edited by David Pringle, published by Games Workshop (1990)

Demon Download by Jack Yeovil, published by Boxtree Books (1990); republished by Black Flame (2005)

Krokodil Tears by Jack Yeovil, published by Games Workshop (1990); published by Boxtree Books (1991); republished by Black Flame (2006)

Comeback Tour by Jack Yeovil, published by Boxtree Books (1991); republished by Black Flame (2007)

Ghost Dancers (Kid Zero in England) by Brian Craig, published by Boxtree Books (1991)

Route 666 by Jack Yeovil, published by Boxtree Books (1993); republished by Black Flame (2006) (an expansion of the short story Route 666 published in the anthology Route 666)

Golgotha Run by Dave Stone, published by Black Flame (2005)

American Meat by Stuart Moore, published by Black Flame (2005)

Jade Dragon by James Swallow, published by Black Flame (2006)

Reality Bites by Stuart Moore, published by Black Flame (October 2006)

The final book of the "Demon Download Cycle", United States Calvary [not a typo], was promised in the back of Comeback Tour but never produced. The finished manuscript to Violent Tendency by Eugene Byrne was lost when the writer's Amstrad PCW died.

Playing Dark Future today

You can still find copies online for around £70. Pretty steep, but if you're into old-Skool GW and 80's punk, you'll love it. YMMV, however.

A PC game is being developed by Auroch Digital, tentatively due to be released in 2018.