WE'RE LIVE! Tentacles of the Void launches on Kickstarter!

6 days ago

3 min read

The cryo pods are open. The crew is missing. The aliens are hungry. And our second gamebook is officially LIVE ON KICKSTARTER!

After months of writing, illustrating, testing, tweaking, rewriting, redrawing and occasionally wondering why we thought making another gamebook was a good idea, Tentacles of the Void is finally ready for you to get your hands on.

Well, nearly. First, we need your help to bring it into the world!

BACK THE GAMEBOOK ON KICKSTARTER

From necromancers to nasty aliens

Our first gamebook, Legion of the Necromancer, was our tribute to the classic Fighting Fantasy adventures we grew up with. We hoped to raise £3,000 on Kickstarter. You helped us raise more than £10,500, and we couldn't have been happier with the response.

So, naturally, we decided to do it all again.

This time, however, we've traded dark fantasy for deep space, swords for pulse rifles and necromancers for a collection of thoroughly unpleasant alien creatures.

Think Alien meets Space Hulk, with a dash of classic gamebook adventure and the occasional terrible joke.

Welcome aboard the Fedai Alvarez

You're supposed to be heading home.

Instead, you wake from cryosleep aboard the Fedai Alvarez, a spaceship drifting through deep space. Every other cryo pod is empty. The crew has vanished. Something is terribly wrong.

And there's something aboard the ship that really, really doesn't want you to leave.

Here's a little taste from the book...

The other pods are all open and all empty. What feels like only moments ago, you were saying 'goodnight' to your new friends. Now it's like the Mary Celeste, silent except for the soporific white noise of the ship's engine, brightly lit and empty. Eerie.Have you been awakened by accident? Is it a systems error? How long have you been asleep, anyway?!

From here, it's up to YOU to find out what's happened, explore the ship, gather what you need, decide who to trust and somehow get out alive.

Good luck with that.

400 sections. Two dice. One very bad journey.

Tentacles of the Void is a complete solo sci-fi horror gamebook, with 400 numbered sections, dice-based combat, weapons, equipment, mysterious codes, questionable companions and multiple routes through the adventure.

We've tried to make the ship feel like a real place, with interconnected areas to explore, machinery to operate, secrets to uncover and plenty of opportunities to make life-changing mistakes.

Or life-ending ones.

Here's another little excerpt:

You head on down the corridor. Strange shadows, openings and ducts make you jittery - always expecting some sudden attack from out of nowhere. Every handle is a claw, every switch is an eye, every piece of conduit a tail. You're growing paranoid.

The more you explore, the more you learn. Some discoveries will help you survive your next attempt. Others will make you wish you'd stayed in your cryo pod.

And, of course, we've filled the thing with James' incredible hand-drawn illustrations.

And we've made some rather lovely things to go with it!

We got a bit carried away with this campaign.

Alongside the standard paperback and digital PDF, we've created a special-edition hardback with a gorgeous green foil cover.

But that's not all!

Apparently writing a 400-section gamebook wasn't quite enough for Gill, who enjoyed the whole thing so much that he went and wrote a novel based on the adventure, too.

Called Escape from the Fedai Alvarez, it's a 48,000-word sci-fi horror novel featuring many of the same characters, creatures, locations and encounters, but told as a traditional story.

Meanwhile, James Isaacs has produced a beautiful collection of A5 art cards featuring illustrations from the gamebook, plus a special foil art print.

For the real collectors, there's also a premium bundle featuring an original bespoke sketch by James.

So whether you want to play the adventure, read the novel, collect the artwork or get your hands on the whole lot, there's something for you.

Come and join us!

We're incredibly excited to be launching our second Kickstarter.

When we started Hammerforge Chronicles, it was really just two mates who loved gamebooks, illustration, sci-fi, fantasy and rolling dice to see what horrible thing would happen next.

The response to Legion of the Necromancer made us realise that there are plenty of you out there who love this stuff just as much as we do.

So, to everyone who backed the first book, bought a copy, reviewed it, shared our posts or simply came over to say hello at a convention: thank you. You're the reason we're doing book two.

And if you're new to Hammerforge, welcome aboard!

Please head over to Kickstarter, have a look at the campaign, check out the artwork and rewards and, if you like what we're doing, we'd absolutely love you to back us.