The Devoured Labyrinth | for the Shadowdark RPG

Book Expansion Unlocked! New Stretch Goals!
10 months ago – Thu, Jun 12, 2025 at 10:56:29 AM

Zac here, and we've got several things to go over today. We continue to roll forward at a strong pace, thanks in part to you all sharing the project and Mastering Dungeons giving us a shout-out on their latest episode! Shawn and Teos have hosted one of our collective favorite podcasts for years, and it's a real thrill to have them give us a nod. 

Stretch Goal Unlock

Today we've unlocked one of my absolute favorite stretch goals: The Volitant Skull - a 4-page book expansion. It actually may end up being 6 pages or so, but I don't think anyone will mind much if we go over. This expansion is included in the PDF and both print versions.

This is being put together by "Shadow" Zack Allen. When we were wrapping up the design of the book and thinking about stretch goals, I realized that it could be fun if we had a "dungeon" that came to the players. Something that could hop from the Central Jungle to the underground Labyrinth and beyond. 

That ended up being the Volitant Skull (or whatever it ends up being called). My only real briefs for Zack were: titanic floating skull, Rakshasa inhabitant, and some form of social component. We also removed the standard formatting for a dungeon and opened up his word count. I'm super excited to see what he comes up with!

Current Art Vote Rankings

We've still got a few days left to vote (wraps on the 17th), but here's where things are standing at the moment. Basically, Options 1, 2 & 4 are neck and neck for the lead, but it's still anyone's game!

Option 1. Drow summoning a marilith demon in a temple.

Option 2. Balor demon standing victorious as a defeated drow mage falls down a chasm.

Option 3. Drow in a summoning circle, with dretches or imps ready to do their bidding.

Option 4. Drow summoner with a glabrezu demon coming through a portal.

Option 5. Drow commanding a menacing vrock demon to attack.

How to Vote: Post in the main COMMENT SECTION of the campaign. Use the format: "Option #x".

New Stretch Goals

Since you've plowed through all the goals we had listed, we've thrown out a couple more. 

• 🔒 $34,000.00 | Add-On: Roll20 Goblin Bundle
• 🔒 $37,000.00 | 4 Extra Commoner Cards (Oafs)

My wife and I are pretty cozy with Roll20 conversions at this point, so we're excited to dive into a section of this project if we can scooch up the funding a bit more, but we'll talk about that once we hit it. 

Next Project

So I know this project hasn't wrapped yet, and this may also not be your cup of tea, but over on my Snapback Game Studios profile, we're gearing up for our next launch, and it's one we've been cooking up since 2024. It's by far my most ambitious project to date. 

Raptor Ruckus is basically Jurassic Park x Mork Borg. We stripped down the Borg system to its bones, and rebuilt it as a survival horror game with a cleaner layout than you would traditionally expect from a Borg. 

It launches in a few months, and will come packed with a core book, campaign book, GM screen, 1-shot pamphlets and more. Some of the writers on Devoured have been my partners on this project as well, including Frank Tedeschi, Eric Lillard, Zack Allen, and John Baltisberger. We'd love for you to give us a follow!

TTFN,

Zac G.

Backer Poll, Stretch Goal Unlock, & New Reward Tier!
10 months ago – Wed, Jun 11, 2025 at 06:53:48 AM

Hello again!

Zac here with a Stretch Goal update, plus a few other tidbits. We have reached our biggest milestone stretch goal - the back cover! Thanks to you, we're going to commission our amazing cover artist, Yuri Perkowski Domingos, to do another piece for the back.

Not only that, we're hoping you will help us decide how the back cover of your book will look! With our front cover featuring viperians, goblins, and a giant, we want our back cover to reflect two other major threats in the Devoured Labyrinth - drow and demons. We've come up with 5 ideas, and we'd like you to vote on which one you like best.

Please note that we love Yuri's distinctive style and plan to give him lots of creative freedom on how to realize the piece with these elements. Thus, the final art may look somewhat different, but we are sure it'll smash. Here are the choices:

1. Drow summoning a marilith demon in a temple.

2. Balor demon standing victorious as a defeated drow mage falls down a chasm.

3. Drow in a summoning circle, with dretches or imps ready to do their bidding.

4. Drow summoner with a glabrezu demon coming through a portal.

5. Drow commanding a menacing vrock demon to attack.

How to Vote: Post in the main COMMENT SECTION of the campaign. Use the format: "Option #".

We want to get working on this as quickly as we can, so the vote will close 9am ET on June 17th. We'll provide running tallies in our updates between now and then.

New Reward Tier

A minor thing, but we added another Retailer tier that includes 5 Crawler Decks alongside the 5 books. Retailers can switch to this by clicking the "Manage your pledge" button. 

Add-On Highlight: Tower of Six

Almost a hundred of you have already picked up the adventure zine, The Tower of Six. Thank you! For those of you who haven't, let me tell you what you're missing out on. 

Pitch: Long ago, a cabal of mages sealed an eldritch evil in an underground chamber, building a bastion tower above it and pledging to guard the area. That was long, long ago. The mages have left or died, and a cult has wormed its way inside the derelict structure and is piecing together a terrible ritual that will free their patron.

It's a tower-crawl that bleeds into a dungeon, and one of my favorite adventures I've ever written.

That'll do it for this update. I'll hit you back up when we smash through this next stretch goal in a few days. 

Remember to vote in the art poll!

TTFN,

Zac G.

Stretch Goal Unlock & Reveal! Another Interview!
10 months ago – Fri, Jun 06, 2025 at 12:33:23 PM

Woah! 

Zac here. We thought we'd probably hit $20k, but not this fast. Thanks for helping spread the word. 

You've knocked over the second stretch goal, expanding the Equipment Pad up to 50 sheets (both in the box and in the individual add-on). 

In addition, we've revealed another stretch goal: The Volitant Skull - 4 Page Book Expansion at $30,000.00. This feeds into the PDF, Softcover, and Hardcover variations, and it will be written by "Shadow" Zack Allen. 

Zack is one of my favorite people, his writing is absolutely delicious, and he loves doing the weirdest shit we can throw at him. I think The Volitant Skull fits the bill.

Also, today I sat down with Adrian over at Dungeons & Dyslexia this morning for an interview. We just chatted on how we came into the hobby, the industry, and a few of my other recent projects before going through a special larger preview of Devoured. You can watch the whole thing below.

Jeff Stevens is another one of our Dungeon Designers (he made Doom Hold from the preview), and he's putting together his own Shadowdark book of Treasures from the Dark. It's launching on Kickstarter very soon, so give it a follow!

As a side note, Jeff gave me my first freelance gig in the industry, so he has my undying appreciation. 

I think that's about it for this one. 

TTFN,

Zac G.

Stretch Goal Unlocked! Video Preview!
10 months ago – Wed, Jun 04, 2025 at 02:15:26 PM

Heya! 

Zac here, coming in with another update for a stretch goal unlock. We've added 4 more 0-level pregen cards to the Deck of Crawlers, bringing the total up to 9 (and 44 cards in total)! 

As a reminder, each of the 0-level pregens has a rules reference sheet on the back side, which I've found to be super handy to hand out to players.  Brian Colin of Creature Curation is doing the character art.

Also, here's a current preview of Brian's work-in-progress on these illustrations! 

We'd love to know: Would you like to have the opportunity to add 1 or 2 of these hand-drawn illustrations to your order in Backerkit? We're gauging interest. 
Let us know in the comments!

Next, we caught a few errors in the campaign and have tried to update them, but here's some clarity on a few things:

• Retailer Tier. This evidently wasn't showing up for International Retailers. That has been fixed! You should be able to swipe that now. Additional items will be available in Backerkit Pledge Manager at wholesale pricing as well. 
• Roll20 Add-Ons. The Roll20 add-on items also weren't showing up for everyone. That should also now be fixed! They are $20 for Dark Visions and $12 for Tower of Six. Both come with the PDFs. 
• Add-On Delivery Times. Some of the digital add-ons show a delivery date of March '26 instead of Aug '25. There's nothing we can do about that now...but those are definitely not taking till March, lol. You should get them in August. 

We also received a video preview this morning from Adrian Williams. I'll let him tell you what he thought:

Finally, you should 100% check out the OSE Adventure Double Feature that's live right now! It's the work of three of our Dungeon Designers (Jeff Jones, Danny Grimes, and Gregory Harris) and is absolute dynamite. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1580058713/ose-adventure-double-feature

Zac G.