🌙💀🎶 The Skeleton Dance Arcana Returns 🌙🎶💀

🌙💀🎶 THE SKELETON DANCE ARCANA RETURNS 🌙💀🎶

One of Our Most Popular Decks. About 100 Copies Remain. Ten Days Only.

A deck that truly dances.

The Skeleton Dance Arcana became our second-best-selling tarot deck, behind only the Hundred-Acre Arcana. Its original Kickstarter brought together 388 backers and raised more than $41,000.

Now it is returning to Kickstarter for approximately 10 days.

Only around 100 copies remain.

And this is not an unfinished project or a promise of something we hope to make someday. The Skeleton Dance Arcana is already here. It has been produced, fulfilled, shipped, reviewed, and enjoyed by backers around the world.

It is also one of the best products we have ever made.

And now these final copies can help us make what comes 

WHAT IS THE SKELETON DANCE ARCANA?

When the clock strikes midnight, the graveyard awakens.

For centuries, the dancing skeleton has appeared across cultures as an image of mortality, transformation, celebration, and the strange relationship between life and death. From the medieval Danse Macabre to Mexican calaveras, dancing skeletons remind us that life and death are part of the same cycle.

In 1929, that tradition found a new form in Walt Disney's The Skeleton Dance, the first Silly Symphony, where skeletons rise from their graves and dance through the moonlight.

Later that year, The Haunted House brought Mickey Mouse into another eerie world filled with skeletons, coffins, ghosts, music, and macabre comedy.

Both films are now in the public domain.

The Skeleton Dance Arcana brings those worlds together in a complete 78-card tarot deck inspired by the playful, eerie, and wonderfully strange atmosphere of early animation.

It is also a natural fit for tarot.

Tarot is filled with cycles, endings, beginnings, transformation, mystery, mortality, and change. The dancing skeleton turns those ideas into movement and celebration.

Illustrated by Daniela Montesi, with design by Jennifer Redding, the deck reimagines traditional Rider-Waite-Smith symbolism through graveyards, dancing skeletons, haunted houses, owls, pumpkins, spiderwebs, ghosts, moonlight, and the visual language of 1929 animation.

All of the artwork was created by a real illustrator using traditional illustration methods.

That matters to us.

IT WAS ALWAYS ABOUT MAKING THE BEST PRODUCT POSSIBLE

From the beginning, our goal with Steamboat Legends was never to make the cheapest tarot deck possible.

We wanted to make the best product we reasonably could.

We think anyone who already owns one of our decks knows that.

We spent money on artwork, better boxes, card stock, guidebooks, specialty printing, metallic effects, packaging, and production details that would have been very easy to eliminate if our primary goal had been increasing our profit margin.

The Skeleton Dance Arcana may be the clearest example of that philosophy.

The finished deck features a lenticular holographic image on the lid, with another lenticular element at the bottom of the box.

The packaging features beautiful bronze effects and spot UV finishing across the box and sides.

The cards have custom backs and deep black edges.

Everything is housed inside a premium magnetic presentation box.

All of those things cost more.

We did them anyway.

We could have simplified the packaging. We could have removed the specialty effects. We could have chosen cheaper production options and kept more of the money.

We did not.

We put the money into the deck.

And the finished product was so good that it won a 2026 Graphic Design USA Packaging Design Award in the Games/Toys category.

That recognition meant a great deal to us because it validated exactly what we had been trying to do from the beginning.

Make something exceptional.

WE DID THE WORK AND WE DELIVERED

Trust has become a serious problem in crowdfunding.

Many people have backed projects and waited a year, two years, or even longer without receiving what they were promised.

Others finally receive their tarot decks only to discover cheap printing, flimsy packaging, disappointing materials, or a finished product that barely resembles what they originally supported.

We understand why people have become cautious.

That is also why we believe a creator's record should count for something.

Over the past few years, we have created approximately six tarot decks.

We did not just launch them.

We delivered them. Again and again and again.

CAPPY & CROC

Cappy & Croc is an original 78 card tarot deck following two characters, a capybara and a young caiman, through a strange world built from the imagery and archetypes of tarot.

Rather than illustrating the archetypes straight, we're using them to tell a story about character, friendship, adventure, choices, and change. Every card is a moment in that story.

Daniela Montesi is illustrating the deck from start to finish, so the whole world holds together as one continuous vision, and it's getting the same attention to detail we brought to our previous tarot decks.

We think it can become something very special.

STARLIGHT & STARDUST TAROT

Starlight & Stardust Tarot is planned as our next public-domain tarot project, inspired by the next evolution of Betty Boop material entering the public domain in 2027.

We want to approach it the same way we approached The Skeleton Dance Arcana.

Not as a cheap novelty product.

We want to create something beautiful, strange, sophisticated, and worthy of the source material.

And once again, we want to pay real artists to make it.

STEAMBOAT LEGENDS

Steamboat Legends may be our most ambitious project yet.

It is a tabletop adventure role-playing game inspired by the public-domain world of Steamboat Willie, combined with exploration, monsters, treasure, strange characters, storytelling, and the traditions of fantasy role-playing games.

Think early public-domain animation meets tabletop fantasy adventure.

It is weird.

It is ambitious.

It is exactly the kind of project we started Steamboat Legends to create.

And we're creating it now. 

THE MOUSE MATINEE THREE-DECK TAROT SET

For this campaign, we are also bringing together three of our early-animation tarot decks in one special collection.

Steamboat Arcana 1928

Gaucho's Arcana 1928

The Skeleton Dance Arcana

Together, they become:

THE MOUSE MATINEE

Three tarot decks inspired by the strange, inventive, and groundbreaking world of early animation.

For collectors who missed one of our previous campaigns, or anyone who wants all three decks together, The Mouse Matinee will be one of the centerpiece rewards of this campaign.

The Complete Collection (Five Deck Set)

Description
Every deck in the Steamboat Legends library, from the 1928 shorts through the Hundred Acre Wood. Steamboat Arcana 1928, Gaucho's Arcana, Skeleton Dance Arcana, Hundred-Acre Arcana, and Mystic Honeypot Arcana, including both American Graphic Design Award winners. The whole shelf in one pledge.

Pledge amount
$195

TEN DAYS

This is not going to be another month-long Kickstarter.

We are opening the campaign for approximately 10 days.

We already made the deck.

We already paid the artist and designer.

We already manufactured it.

We already fulfilled the original campaign.

We already shipped it.

We already proved that we could deliver it.

We’re hoping to ship in time for spooky season. 

This time, the question is different.

WHAT CAN THESE FINAL DECKS HELP US MAKE NEXT?

If you already own one of our decks, we think you know how seriously we take the work.

If you backed us before, thank you. You helped make all of this possible.

And if you have ever been burned by a crowdfunding campaign, we hope our history means something.

We did not just make promises.

We made the products.

We paid the artists.

We answered the messages.

We shipped the rewards.

We put the money into the work.

We delivered again and again and again.

We believe doing those things should count for something.

Now we are asking for the opportunity to keep going.

To pay more artists.

To keep working with real designers, writers, illustrators, and production professionals.

To rebuild enough promotional support to launch responsibly.

To make Steamboat Legends sustainable enough that creating great products does not leave us deeper in debt.

And to make the strange projects we still believe deserve to exist.

Cappy & Croc.

Starlight & Stardust Tarot.

Steamboat Legends.

These final Skeleton Dance decks can help us begin.

Thank you for supporting the work, the artists, and everything we hope to create next.

Steamboat Legends