The Treasure At The End Of This Dungeon Is An Escape From This Dungeon And We Will Never Escape From This Dungeon
A downloadable game
The Treasure At The End Of This Dungeon etc. etc. etc.
"Some of the most beautiful, poetic game design you can get, a super fun looking story game of a roguelike, AND it's freaking gorgeous." - Brandon Leon-Gambetta, game designer & podcaster.
This is a roleplaying game for four players and no GM. Each room of this dungeon is different and has its own rules. Each of us crawling this dungeon is different and has our own rules. This is a kaleidoscopic game of an increasingly complicated dungeon from which there is no escape, and what happens to us as we die within its walls.
We are bone and feathers and we will never escape and we want to escape. We want to fly. The treasure at the end of the dungeon is an escape from this dungeon. We will never escape from this dungeon. We are bones and feathers and hope and magic and we will never escape from this dungeon. We want to fly out of here on our busted wings and feel the air on our faces turned up towards the sun, but each room of the dungeon is the same and each room of the dungeon brings something new and we will never escape from this dungeon.
Each room of this dungeon unlocks more of this dungeon. There are five rooms in this dungeon, and there are many rooms more than five in this dungeon. We have each died in one of the rooms in this dungeon, and we will each die many times more in each of the rooms of this dungeon. Each room of this dungeon is different but each room of this dungeon is the same, only growing larger with each time we enter each room of this dungeon. As we crawl we repeat, the cycle is always the same and we have different faces, the guardians are different beasts, the traps are different traps, the deaths are different deaths, and the treasure is always the same. The treasure at the end of this dungeon is an escape from this dungeon and we will never escape from this dungeon.
Supplemental Material
We are bone and feathers and we will never escape and we want to escape. We've been through this before. The treasure at the end of this dungeon is an escape from this dungeon and we will never escape from this dungeon. This is not new information.
Purchase Fractals: Supplementary Rooms & Selves for A Kaleidoscopic Existential Dungeon Crawl, a supplement containing new Rooms & Selves from a wide variety of talented guest designers!
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $15 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Exclusive content
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Community Copies
Community Copies are available for those who cannot comfortably cover the cost of this game. If you're worried about cost, I encourage you to take advantage of the CC provided here, and enjoy!
Community Copies are made available based on this game's ratings, with 100 CC added to the pool for every 10 ratings. If no Copies are available, leave a rating and encourage your friends to do the same!
Development log
- Physical Copies Available!!!Feb 17, 2020
Comments
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Best and most daring representation of a Thief class I've ever seen.
This is a great and very innovative game that is just as much - if not more - fun reading it as there is fun playing it. The rules are both simple and very confusing, but if you are willing to just roll with some more abstract concepts needing a creative mind while playing this will be a great and unique experience !
A brilliant piece of art. I know I'll read and reread this game over and over and I will find more things to love.
The Treasure At The End Of This Dungeon is a lyric game about roguelike dungeon crawls. Don't go in expecting something extremely concrete and runnable. But do go in expecting some spectacular writing, and the execution of a concept that hits harder than any other dungeon crawl I've ever seen.
Treasure At The End's PDF is 16 pages, with a straightforward layout that's well organized and easy to read.
For core mechanics, Treasure At The End is pretty direct. You follow the rules for your character class, and you follow the rules for the dungeon room you are in. Anyone who breaks the rules dies. Anyone who opens the door to two dungeon rooms dies.
The dungeon rooms are simple, and focus on broad, common beats in dungeon crawls. A puzzle, a trap, a fight, etc. And then the loop begins again.
The character classes are much more interesting, and each interact with death-looping in different ways. The Muscle can simply ignore death by crossing rules off of their sheet. The Mage loses spells on death, but gains more casts and the ability to combine their remaining spells. The Thief can bluff new mechanics, but erases everything on death. The Healer can prevent deaths and permanently erase mechanics from rooms.
Overall, if you like lyric games and metafiction and seeing the dungeon crawler formula picked apart into fractals, I'd strongly recommend checking this out. It's playable, but more than that it's a fascinating read.
Also, there is a way out of the dungeon. I think you can find it too.
I love your reviews, by the way.
But wait, there is an escape????
Thank you!
And I might be reading the rules wrong, but I think there's a way you can use Thief + Healer hijinks to engineer an escape.
OH NO! I'll check it out haha!
lot of word.
I'm interested in buying but it looks like I can only pay through paypal; some searching says stripe payment is something that creators have to sign up for separately. Is that in the cards right now?
Okay was anyone going to tell me that The Treasure At The End Of This Dungeon Is An Escape From This Dungeon And We Will Never Escape This Dungeon is the best Dark Souls ttrpg or was I just supposed to realize this while thinking about the game at 4 am?
I really like this game.
I think something went wrong is it supposed to be $560.00?
Yes! I am kickstarting the game starting 2/29 and the price here is an incentive to get the game through the Kickstarter. There is a link and explanation in the game’s description.