Zine Month Recommendation Wrap-Up
Once Upon a Time in the Zine Quest
Happy leap day! This is it, the last day of zine month! My own Zine Month project has wrapped up successfully (thank you, everyone who supported me in this venture!), as have over a hundred others on Kickstarter, Backerkit, Crowdfundr, and itch.io. I hope you had a chance to take a look at this year’s offerings, and maybe even found something that caught your interest.
Over 200 projects were created for this event, with a good many of them now fully funded. There are a handful of projects, however, that are still seeking additional funding through the first week of March. So, to wrap up this Zine Month, here are three final recommendation that you can jump on before the month is over.
Wondering what Zine Month is all about? Check out my article explaining it:
Previous Recommendations
The Colony - Magical Apocalypse HexCrawl by Gabriel Kerr
The Sorcerer’s Fate by Nerdronomicon
Terror Vision by Lex Mandrake
Grotten - 1 Bit Deeper by Tommy Sunzenauer
The Hauntings of Hyde Park by Nico MacDougall
Precious Things by Lucas Zellers
HIC: Tapestry - Toilet Roll Paper Game by Tanuki Games
Community Radio, Second Edition by Thoughtcrime Games
From Midgard to Eternity by Armanda Haller
The Details of Our Escape by Tyler Crumrine
For an in-depth master list, check out the link below:
Coffee Run: A Misadventure - An Average Trooper Mayhem by Vitali Demura
Type: Adventure | Genre: Dark Fantasy | System: Average Trooper
The Coffee Run: Misadventure Zine for the Average Trooper is where you play as the lowest of the low skeleton troopers and become WHOEVER THE F*CK YOU WANT TO BE! Attach body parts, explore the three areas, generate new DUNGEONS in them, and use the JINX SYS to start playing and rolling those bones quickly.
Coming from Ukrainian designer Vitali Demura, Coffee Run is a “misadventure” for the RPG Average Trooper, which Demura Kickstarted back in 2022. In it, you play as an average skeleton in an underground army. Presumably, there is coffee involved.
Seeing that the system is relatively unknown and I do not have a copy, it is hard to say how it plays, but there seems to be a cut-and-paste system in which you can attach new limbs to your skeleton by cutting out paper limbs and pasting them to your character sheet to earn new buffs, which is a really cool idea. What is really striking about the adventure is the art by Guri Guru and Stekolshuk666, which drips with punk energy. I’m not entirely sure what this game is about, but with visual impact this strong, I almost don’t care.
Dungeon of the Week by Marcin Wójcik
Type: Adventure | Genre: Fantasy | System: Agnostic
Embark on a thrilling journey every week with "Dungeon of the Week," a unique Kickstarter project designed for tabletop role-playing game enthusiasts. Our project aims to revolutionize your gaming sessions by providing a weekly magazine with high-quality content.
Polish designer Marcin Wójcik has traded the one-zine model for something a little more unique: a weekly zine subscription. Every week for ten weeks, backers will recieve a one-page, five-room dungeon and accompanying adventure for use in any fantasy tabletop setting. At the cost of less than $1 per dungeon, this looks to be a pretty good bargain.
Dungeon of the Week looks like it embraces the more scrappy, paired-down method of RPG zine creation, and offers a wide set of tools to actually implement the dungeons into your game. A printer-friendly version for home printing and a collection of maps and tokens for virtual tabletop (VTT) play are availbe for each map, reducing prep time for every adventure.
I Crave The Loop by Jonathon Boyle
Type: Solo RPG | Genre: Comedy | System: Original
You thought it would be as simple as pouring a late-night bowl of cereal and eating it. You thought that perhaps this time, you might escape its notice. You thought wrong. From the moment the first sugary loop hit the bowl, it began the chase. A creature unknowable, invulnerable, insatiable. The pursuit begins again. It craves to devour not your sanity, but your cereal.
I Crave the Loop is a solo RPG about trying to eat a snack before the monster that haunts you eats it first. It is a goofy concept that looks like a lot of fun to play, and even features a two-player mode if you have a friend who enjoys interrupting your snack breaks. The Rogue-like nature the game advertises, referring to a genre of video games featuring heavy use of random generation, means that the game should offer a unique experience every time it is played.