Introducing: SKÜLLBOX
What do you get when you take Adventure Time, a handful of shrooms, and some classic punk rock and mix it together? You get Shardstone Assembly's next game, SKÜLLBOX!
SKÜLLBOX is a rules-lite, zine-based game where the players take the role of floating skulls who have to protect their dungeon home from the worm-lipped "heroic" raiders who are coming to take your stuff. Fight against these hooligans by possessing mystical boxes and building some gnarly traps. Survive the first two raids and then the boss herself, Saint-Queen Sophronia, is coming to play. Beat her and her whole stinkin' realm will fall to ruin.
The creative mind behind the wonderful and amazing art of SKÜLLBOX is Gospo, whose weird cartoons have brought a supreme level of flavor to the project. The zine itself is unabashedly art-punk, meaning that every page is filled with Gospo's stylish paintings. We actually have so much art for this thing that it kinda' doesn't even fit, and I find that super rad.
SKÜLLBOX is, like I said, a rules-lite game. You have three abilities (Savvy/Athletics/Weird), roll dice pools for successes, and have abilities to use on each raid. What makes this game special is that it uses a technique I've recently grown fond of: RP prompts. Whenever the skulls are building or upgrading traps between raids, talking to black-market merchants, or trying to get enemy beasts to turn to their side, an RP prompt is provided. These prompts allow for different remixes so that they can be reused again and again to make new stories, but there's also enough fresh prompts in this zine that you'll get a good number of one-shots out.
Also, note that SKÜLLBOX is a zine-based game. That means this first issue we're doing is part of what will hopefully be a long line of releases If we do well enough on our Kickstarter this year, expect to see more SKÜLLBOX down the line. Every issue will contain something new to add to the game, or otherwise remix old concepts.
For the parents out there, this game was designed with children in mind. SKÜLLBOX can be a cartoon-like Adventure Time or like Rick & Morty, and it is up to the table to decide which direction they lean. There's no cursing in the book, the art isn't more graphic than anything you'd see on Cartoon Network, and the tone of the book is written to work with all ages.
To follow us as we work on this project, and to see when our eventual Kickstarter releases!
