One Saturday morning in June, I woke up with a fully formed game in my head. What would happen if you took Scrabble and did it inside a dungeon? By the end of that weekend, the first iteration of Word Dungeon existed, and people seemed quite positive about it.
Now, nearly five months later, I’m aiming for a Kickstarter launch in mid to late January 2026. There’ve been lots of maps, an entry into the Board Game Geek solo print and play competition (which you can vote on at the moment), a pre-launch page, and 155 followers built with zero spend. Let me talk about what I’ve learnt along the way.
Here’s the reality: I don’t have any budget for this. With a print and play game, it’s unlikely that any advertising spend would bring back the returns needed to make the cost per click worthwhile. It was always going to be a small campaign, which meant I needed to get creative about building an audience.
This also meant making a difficult decision. Sky Relief, my other project, needed to be shelved. It hadn’t got stuck exactly, but it had reached a point where I needed to put it aside. Let it sit in the corner of my brain and ruminate whilst I focused on Word Dungeon. That turned out to be the right call, because this project has become an opportunity to build an audience for that game in the future.
The main route for building followers has been through Instagram and the game itself. Word Dungeon lent itself to regular content because it’s inherently shareable. There’s a full version, but there are also smaller versions called Little Word Dungeons (you can download a few here if you’d like to play) that people can play quickly, share with others, and even tackle on mobile (though it’s better printed out). Until recently, I was doing live play alongs through Instagram Live, with people joining in to play alongside me.
Then Kickstarter changed loads of stuff for creators back in spring/summer 2025. Before that, pre-launch pages had very little detail on them. Now they can be as busy as a full launch page, and crucially, I can include links. In my second paragraph, I link to my website where people can download a free version of the game. From there, I can build an email list. Every time I do an update, everybody who’s followed the Kickstarter gets it.
I’ve been exploring what meaningful content looks like in these updates. For me, it’s about providing more game for people to play. Each update shares a bit of progress, but also something they can download and enjoy right away.
Alongside this, I’ve got a Discord with about ten people who really love the game. They’re incredibly supportive, and I can bounce ideas past them and incorporate their suggestions into new versions. Board Game Duck, one of the Discord members, inspired the Minotaur version of the game.
I’ve found that boosts in following happen when other people promote your work. Cross promotion is really good. Some folks have shared my game alongside their own Kickstarters, and that’s driven real engagement.
Because I’m a bit obsessive about understanding what works, I built a desktop tool that tracks follower growth automatically. At the moment, you can only track this by checking daily and writing it down. My tool lets me see exactly when things spike or dip. Big increases have come with cross promotion. There’ve been a few drops too (every now and then you lose a couple of followers), but nothing significant yet.
My guess is that drops happen when updates go out, because that’s when people actually learn what your game is about. In a way, that’s helpful. A big number is good, but what you really want is a quality set of followers. The ones who stay might be the ones who genuinely care, especially those who come from the email list.
The Kickstarter will probably feature three versions of Word Dungeon: the pure dungeon version, Treasure Depths (which is quite nice), and the Minotaur game (push your luck, with words). Plus one of the other maps I’m exploring. I’m also building a booklet of Little Dungeons for people to play on the commute, rather than printing out a big game.
It won’t have a high funding goal. This is a hobbyist project, a first game, and it’s really about building an audience over the long term. The Board Game Geek competition has been particularly good for developing and honing the base mechanics, and it’s helped me see that Word Dungeon has lots of legs. Lots of possibilities and routes to take it.
So yeah, mid to late January 2025 is the aim. If you’d like to follow along, you can find the pre-launch page on Kickstarter. If you want to support the Board Game Geek competition entry, you can vote there. Either way, if you hunt around in the updates, you can grab several free games to try out.
I’ll try and update more regularly. That’s where things stand right now. Oh, yeah, whilst you’re here: please also vote for the game on BGG and follow the kickstarter.
