BACKSTAB!

BACKSTAB! is a side-scrolling solo dungeon crawler from the designer of Rogue Dungeon, built around one idea: A smart rogue doesn’t face problems head-on. He gets behind them.

You don’t simply draw the next room and accept your fate. You scout ahead, choose rooms from your hand, and build the dungeon as you explore. Every monster, trap, ladder, pit, and passage becomes part of a tactical puzzle: find the weakness, create the route, and return when the fight is unfair.

The entire dungeon unfolds as one connected side-view cross-section, with rooms, ladders, pits, ropes, monsters, and alternate routes stacked above and below one another. The layout takes its inspiration from the over-and-under world of Pitfall!, rebuilt as a tactical dungeon you construct room by room.

Play it flat with the compact Tabletop Edition, or build it upright on the Dungeon Wall—a freestanding magnetic play surface that holds the entire dungeon in front of you. The Dungeon Wall requires less table space and preserves the complete game state, allowing you to pause your descent and resume later without rebuilding a thing.

Introducing the Dungeon Wall: a 22 × 8.5 × 2-inch standing vertical dungeon that uses roughly one-quarter of the table space required by the same dungeon laid flat.

Your Rogue isn’t a stat block. He is a modular ferrous paper doll who physically carries the consequences of the dungeon.

The system was inspired by one of the most memorable ideas in Ghosts ’n Goblins: every hit strips away another piece of armor until the hero is left fighting for his life in a loincloth. You physically equip magnetic gear directly onto your character. Found new boots? Snap them on your rogue. Took a hit? Pop the armor off and place a bloody gash directly on your chest.

Why track hit points when you can count your scars instead? Gone are the boring stat tracks and cube-pushing, replaced entirely by thematic “memories” that physically represent your leveled stats.  

BACKSTAB! replaces standard loot cards with custom-shaped counters. Store your plunder in a physical backpack and place equipped weapons directly on the weapons rack.

In the Dungeon Wall Edition, the loot, backpack, and weapons rack are magnetic, allowing your entire inventory to remain organized and visible.

Each time you scout a new room, you choose which tile to add from your hand. The dungeon is not simply happening to you. You are helping build the maze that may save you, trap you, or create the perfect route to a monster’s back.

Leave Medusa alone until you find the mirror. Drop through a trapdoor. Climb down a ladder. Slip through darkness. Turn the dungeon itself into your weapon.

Every room presents a problem: a monster, trap, obstacle, puzzle, or temptation. Most problems have a smarter solution. A different room may hold the item you need, reveal a hidden route, or allow you to approach from behind.

You can charge straight in.

You can also be clever.

In BACKSTAB!, clever is usually bloodier for everyone else.

By the end of the crawl, the dungeon is no longer just a map.

It is the story of what happened.

The Tabletop Edition and Dungeon Wall Edition contain the same complete BACKSTAB! game.

Both include the same dungeon rooms, Rogue, equipment, wounds, memories, loot, monsters, boss, rules, and questionable decisions. The difference is how the dungeon is presented on your table.

The Tabletop Edition builds the dungeon across folding play mats with fitted guides that keep the room tiles straight and aligned.

It contains the complete game in a compact 8.5 × 5.5 × 3.5-inch box weighing approximately three pounds. It is easier to carry, store, and ship while preserving the full BACKSTAB! experience.

Choose the Tabletop Edition if you want the complete game in its most practical and portable form.

The Dungeon Wall Edition builds the dungeon upright using modular magnetic tiles on a freestanding steel play surface framed in stained wood.

The magnetic system holds the dungeon, Rogue, equipment, wounds, memories, and loot firmly in place. It requires less table space and preserves the game state between sessions, allowing you to stop mid-descent and return without rebuilding the dungeon.

Each Dungeon Wall Edition weighs more than ten pounds and is assembled, finished, inspected, and numbered in my Austin workshop.

Choose the Dungeon Wall Edition if you want BACKSTAB! in its most tactile, permanent, and handcrafted form.

From the designer of Rogue Dungeon, BACKSTAB! evolves the solo dungeon crawl with greater player agency, physical storytelling, and virtually no bookkeeping. In the Dungeon Wall Edition, even the dungeon itself rises from the table and stands on its own.

Every dungeon needs a rogue. Every rogue needs something worth stabbing.

The core game pits a betrayed cutthroat against the Two-Headed Cerberus: the ultimate symbol of greed, envy, and treachery. Future expansions will add new rogues, dungeons, and bosses as the workshop grows.

He is every man left for dead with a knife in his back. He is you.

After a perfect heist, two old friends betrayed you in your hidden dungeon safehouse. They paralyzed you, stole your share, stripped you of your gear, and left you for the rats.

They should have checked your pulse.

Broken, broke, and burning with spite, you crawled out of the dark and heard rumors of the Two-Headed Cerberus—a creature once famed for loyalty, now twisted into the ultimate symbol of betrayal.

You are tracking the Cerberus on a suicide mission to take what it guards and claim a mythical fortune known only as FU Money.

You still are not sure what “FU” stands for.

But you intend to find out.

Legend says the Cerberus was born with three heads: Loyalty, Greed, and Envy.

Greed and Envy sacrificed Loyalty to a dark god, and the beast was rewarded with impossible wealth. Now treasure gathers in its lair like iron to a magnet.

The Cerberus does not wait patiently in the final room like a dumb pile of hit points. It actively fights back, commanding its minions and organizing counterattacks against you.

Challenge. Weakness. Reward.

Every room in BACKSTAB! presents a problem: a monster, trap, locked passage, cursed object, hidden route, or dangerous opportunity.

Most problems have a smarter solution hidden somewhere else in the dungeon.

Find the mirror before confronting Medusa. Feed the meaty rib to the dire wolf. Use rope to cross the pit. Steal the lockpick before returning to the safe. Search for another route that brings you out behind the monster instead of directly in front of it.

When you overcome a room, its reward may become the answer to another problem later. Loot, tools, memories, clues, and shortcuts connect the dungeon into a web of challenges and solutions.

You can charge in headfirst and hope your skull is harder than the wall.

Or you can scout, remember, backtrack, steal what you need, and return with a plan.

Both approaches use your head.

One leaves fewer teeth on the floor.

Monsters in BACKSTAB! face a direction.

That matters.

If you rush them head-on, you are in a fight. Steel meets steel. Armor breaks. Wounds happen. Spite is earned the hard way.

But if you can use the dungeon against them—a ladder, a pit, a trapdoor, a shadowed route, a teleporter, a hidden passage, or a room placed at just the right angle—you may reach the monster from behind.

That is when the rogue does what rogues do best.

Light matters too. Torches, darkness, dim rooms, and shadowed approaches can change whether a monster sees you coming. Some rooms expose you. Some rooms hide you. Some monsters can be fooled. Some cannot.

The puzzle is not just whether you are strong enough.

The puzzle is whether you can make the fight unfair before it begins.

The state of the game remains visible on the board.

Monster hits are placed directly on the monster. When it dies, leave a skull behind.

Armor goes directly on the Rogue. When it breaks, take it off. Wounds remain on the body where they landed.

Experience becomes memories. Failure becomes Spite—turning bad rolls and broken plans into a resource you can use later.

By the end of the crawl, you do not need a score sheet to remember what happened. The dungeon, skulls, scars, missing armor, and half-naked Rogue tell the story for you.

BACKSTAB! was not designed around a shipping container, retail margin, or mass-production assembly line.

Both editions are produced in small batches in my Austin workshop. 

Think of the ancient boards of Senet or The Royal Game of Ur. They survived for millennia because they were carved from real materials, not pressed pulp. When some future dungeon crawler in the year 4052 kicks in the door of your tomb, they will find your beloved copy of BACKSTAB!—still standing, completely intact, long after all the corporate cardboard of this century has turned to dust.

 

 

Every physical copy passes through my hands before it reaches yours.

I print and cut the dungeon tiles, finish and seal their edges, assemble the components, inspect the finished game, and pack it in my Austin workshop.

For the Dungeon Wall Edition, I also stain and line the wooden box, assemble the steel and wood Dungeon Wall, mount the magnets, finish the wooden borders, and number the completed game.

This is not a game designed and then handed to a factory.

When you pledge for BACKSTAB!, I personally make your copy.

BACKSTAB! already exists as a working physical game. This campaign is not funding an idea or waiting for someone else to manufacture it.

GameFound allows me to purchase materials in commercial quantities and invest in the precision cutting equipment, dies, and production jigs needed to make every component faster, cleaner, and more consistent.

Your pledge helps turn a proven workshop prototype into a repeatable small-batch production run without stripping away the features that make it BACKSTAB!

From my bench to your table—one handmade dungeon made for you.

 

The playing surfaces act as physical hard drives: the magnets preserve the game state, letting you pause the crawl, store the board, and resume later without rebuilding the dungeon.

Whichever edition you choose, you receive the same complete BACKSTAB! game.

Altogether, BACKSTAB! contains more than 200 pieces of armor, wounds, memories, loot, monster hits, skulls, henchmen, and other physical markers.

The Tabletop Edition includes folding dungeon play mats with built-in alignment guides that keep the room tiles straight as the dungeon grows.

Everything fits inside a compact 8.5 × 5.5 × 3.5-inch box weighing approximately three pounds.

The Dungeon Wall Edition replaces the folding mats with a freestanding play surface constructed from powder-coated steel and stained wood.

Its room tiles, Rogue, armor, wounds, memories, loot, backpack, weapons rack, and organizer use magnetic and ferrous materials to keep the complete game state firmly in place.

The Dungeon Wall Edition also includes:

Each Dungeon Wall Edition weighs more than ten pounds and is assembled, finished, inspected, and numbered in my Austin workshop.

Because BACKSTAB! is printed and produced in-house, I can prepare the game in your requested language without requiring a separate factory print run.

I will create an initial translation and send the game text to you before printing. You may approve it, correct it, or provide the exact wording you prefer. Those corrections can then become part of a community-reviewed translation for future backers. The goal remains the same: a complete, readable copy of BACKSTAB! made for your table.

 

BACKSTAB! is past the concept stage.

Working physical prototypes exist for the core game, Tabletop Edition, and Dungeon Wall Edition. The side-view dungeon, room tiles, paper-doll Rogue, armor, wounds, memories, loot, monster markers, and handmade production methods have all been built and tested.

The remaining work falls into three areas:

Game Finalization — Complete the final room balancing, challenge–weakness–reward tuning, rulebook wording, reference materials, and component counts.

Production Setup — Purchase materials in commercial quantities, install precision cutting equipment, build production jigs, test packaging, and finalize the repeatable workshop process.

Fulfillment Preparation — Complete the quality-control checklist, production schedule, packing materials, regional shipping arrangements, and final pledge-manager setup.

Estimated Timeline After Funding

Month 1 — Order bulk materials, install cutting equipment, build production jigs, test packaging, and prepare the workshop.

Month 2 — Complete final balancing, lock the rulebook and reference materials, confirm component counts, and run production tests.

Month 3 — Lock the final files, deliver the digital Print & Play files, produce and inspect the first complete batch, and begin rolling fulfillment of physical rewards.

Physical copies will ship in rolling batches beginning in December 2026.

Because BACKSTAB! is produced in small batches, copies will ship in waves rather than all leaving the workshop on the same day. Backers will receive regular production updates showing completed batches, current progress, and upcoming shipping regions.

If demand exceeds the initial workshop capacity, I may expand the workspace or bring in local production assistance. Final assembly, finishing, inspection, and quality control for every game will remain under my supervision.

Shipping is not included in your pledge. It will be charged after the campaign through pledge manager based on the edition you select and your destination.

The United States is unlocked with no minimum backer requirement. Target rates for Canada, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Australia depend on reaching the minimum number of backers needed for regional bulk fulfillment. Backers from both physical editions count toward those totals.

Applicable VAT and GST will be calculated and collected through pledge manager when shipping is charged. You will not need to calculate or arrange these payments separately.

If your region does not reach its minimum, I will contact you before fulfillment. You may choose direct shipping at the actual cost or request a full refund if the resulting shipping cost exceeds your expectations.

My name is Chad Randall Maniccia. I am a game designer, programmer, maker, and lifelong dungeon crawler.

I have been playing Dungeons & Dragons and board games since the fourth grade. Professionally, I spent more than twenty years developing automation systems for the banking and oil and gas industries. I was also a programmer and project lead on the Tales of Illyria trilogy before designing Rogue Dungeon.

For the past seven months, I have worked full-time on BACKSTAB!—designing the game, building prototypes, testing its systems, and developing the production process here in Austin, Texas.

BACKSTAB! began with a question: What if a solo dungeon crawler could feel more physical, immediate, and personal without getting buried beneath bookkeeping? Every part of the game grew from that idea, from the dungeon you build to the equipment and wounds carried directly by your Rogue.

BACKSTAB! is the first release from Rogue Wolf Games, my independent studio for creating physical, story-driven games directly from the designer’s bench to the player’s table.

I live in Austin with my wife, Randi, our son, Valerian, and the rest of our family. You can see more of my work at getyourchadon.com.

BACKSTAB! is past the “can it be built?” stage. Working physical prototypes exist. The board, magnetic tiles, and handmade process all work. The remaining risks are production risks: reliable materials, consistent accuracy, and scaling carefully if demand exceeds my current workshop capacity. This campaign helps reduce those risks by funding bulk materials, better cutting tools, dedicated jigs, test runs, and controlled batch production. Production will stay as close to the maker as practical: in-house first, local partners when needed, then domestic and nearby North American suppliers before considering overseas sourcing. If demand grows beyond my workshop, I will scale with more space and additional craftsman. Final inspection will always remain under my control. BACKSTAB! is workshop craft, not corporate cardboard.

AI allows me to do more, not less. BACKSTAB! uses AI-assisted tools for promotional video, artwork development, and text refinement, but every asset begins and ends with my direction. AI helped generate raw material; I selected, edited, corrected, rebuilt, aligned, and finalized it. The rules, physical design, handmade box, standing dungeon, production process, and final creative decisions are my own work. AI did not replace the creator. It helped one creator do more.

Yes, to the best of my knowledge. AI-assisted assets were created using mainstream commercial tools under their published terms of service. I did not knowingly use protected characters, copyrighted game art, trademarked settings, or prompts targeting specific living artists. AI outputs were used as raw material, then edited, modified, and integrated into my own original rules, layouts, templates, and physical product design. I cannot independently audit third-party training datasets, but I used these tools in good faith and avoided knowingly incorporating protected works.