Word Dungeon Two

Introducing Series Two

Word Dungeon is a solo puzzle game where you explore hand-drawn dungeons by creating a path of words. The first collection had you battling monsters, diving for sunken treasure and outrunning a minotaur, all by placing the right letters in the right places.

Series Two brings three brand new dungeons, each with a new theme and new scoring mechanics. When you back, you'll receive: 

• Rumpledonk's Ruins, 
• Dragon's Castle, 
• A Day at the Zoo, 
• Three extra, full dungeons sponsored by the community. 
• the Stretch Adventures

If you loved the original, this is more of what you came for. If you're new, there's never been a better time to pick up a pen and start spelling your way to victory. Try a demo dungeon here.

The New Games

Dragon's Castle sends you deep into the dragon's lair. You're looting the dungeons for the dragon's hoard - gemstones and treasure. But unlike previous dungeons, as you unlock each door, your next room layout is a surprise. Roll a dice and place objects to block paths carefully. 

You can watch a play through here...

Rumpledonk's Ruins is a hunt with a twist. The Rumpledonk waits at the end of the map with its mouth wide open - it's hungry for letters. Feed it the whole alphabet as you explore the ruins, then finish a word in its mouth to slay the beast.

You can watch a play through here...

Something a little different. A Day at the Zoo trades dark corridors for sunny enclosures and swaps fearsome monsters for friendly animals. It's the most relaxed, family-friendly dungeon in the collection. It's great for co-op play with younger players.

You can watch a play through here...

How to play

Word Dungeon is built around a simple core mechanic: place letters to spell words.

Every turn, you place letters to form a word inside the dungeon. Each turn you must connect a new word (or words) to your previous words by sharing or touching a letter horizontally or vertically. Your first word starts in a designated area and from there you create a path of unique words across the dungeon.

All Word Dungeon games share this foundation. Play any dictionary word you can think of, as long as it connects to your path.

Each map adds its own twist. 

• In Dragon's Castle you're breaking down doors, rolling dice and navigating blockages in hidden rooms. 
• Rumpledonk's Ruins is an alphabet challenge with a hungry monster at the end. Can you play all the letters of the alphabet and escape with the spoils?
• A Day at the Zoo is a lighter, family friendly expedition through the enclosures taking photos of animals.
• Monster Madness pits you against a dungeon overrun with creatures. 
• The Early Bird dungeon: The Apothecary - a shorter dungeon with a new potion brewing mechanic to stretch your vocabulary to its limits.

Each game has different setup requirements, scoring systems and special rules that change how you play. The heart of it remains the same: place letters, spell words and chart your course through the dungeon. You can read the Core Word Dungeon rules here.

Or watch a play through of the original Word Dungeon here.

Reward Tiers

When you back Word Dungeon at the Dungeoneer Tier, you'll receive:

• Three complete dungeons: Dragon's Castle, Rumpledonk's Ruins, A Day at the Zoo.
• All unlocked stretch goals.
• All Dungeon Master dungeons.

All files are black and white A4 PDFs, designed to be printer friendly. Print what you need, when you need it. Play on paper with a pen or load the games onto your tablet or phone and play digitally using the interactive PDFs.

The three core dungeons are ready for download after the campaign successfully funds and the pledge manager has closed. Extra dungeons and stretch goals will be delivered digitally to all backers by the end of 2026.

When you back Word Dungeon at the Monster Hunter Tier, you'll receive:

• Three complete dungeons: Dragon's Castle, Rumpledonk's Ruins, A Day at the Zoo. 
• All unlocked stretch goals.
• All Dungeon Master dungeons.
• Monster Madness - This new dungeon throws creature after creature in your path, and the only way through is to spell exactly what each one demands. No treasure, no gems! Just pure monster killing madness. This dungeon comes with 5 maps with increasing levels of difficulty. Level 1 is a monster hunting walk in the park. Level 5 is your worst nightmare printed on a piece of paper!

You'll also get a blank variant of the dungeon and an expanded monster list so that you can set the difficulty of your own adventures.

Work directly with me to design a brand new Word Dungeon map from scratch. You'll collaborate on the layout, theme, mechanics, challenges and name your dungeon. 

Once complete, your dungeon becomes part of the collection and is made available to all backers who supported the campaign at Dungeoneer or Monster Hunter tiers. Your dungeon expands Word Dungeon and leaves your mark on the game for everyone.

Add ons & Early Birds

The Apothecary is a super-puzzly dungeon. There's a new potion brewing mechanic suggested by the brilliant Martin Raynsford from Don't Eat Puzzles. 

Potion bottles hold two different letters at the same time. Place a word through a bottle and write both letters in. The word must work with both, e.g. SEND and SENT. The potion brews when a second word crosses the bottle the other way and works with both letters too, e.g. BEND and BENT.

You can get the Apothecary as an add-on, along with the original three Word Dungeon games and the One Hundred Dungeons from the BackerKit campaign. If you'd like more detail on them you can find plenty on their original pages here and here.

Stretch Goal Adventures

The Stretch Adventure is a series of little Word Dungeons wrapped up in a story. Explore a dungeon, grab some treasure and then find out what happens next. It's a full adventure you can print and play and it comes with every pledge.

How big will it be? That's up to you. Every 20 new backers unlocks the next part of the adventure. More backers, deeper dungeon, more treasure. Every part we unlock goes to every backer whatever tier you're on. If you share the campaign far and wide, we'll unlock more story and more puzzles!

Back the campaign and help Stretch find out what's down there.

Print and Play

Print and play means no manufacturing delays, no shipping complications, and no waiting months for your game to arrive. Shortly after the campaign funds and the pledge manager is completed, you get access to all three dungeons.

This keeps the price accessible. £7 gets you three complete games (and the extras) because I'm not paying for manufacturing, fulfilment centres or international shipping. The money goes into creating the games, not logistics.

Play digitally

The Word Dungeon maps also come in a digital format. Perfect for playing on your laptop, smartphone or tablet. Try it out using this demo!

The artwork

Every dungeon in this collection is drawn by hand. A while back I couldn't do this at all. But with support and encouragement from some wonderful people, I've practised and practised and practised some more until I've got it just right.

These aren't randomly generated maps. Every corridor, chamber, treasure and gem placement has been carefully considered. 

The artwork for A Day at the Zoo was created by Tom Stratford, who also brought the underwater world of Treasure Depths to life in the first collection. Tom's a childhood friend and his illustrations capture the warmth and fun of a day spent among the animals.

His creativity and talent shine through every detail of the map and I'm grateful to have him as part of this project. You can check out more of his work at tomstratford.net.

You can read the full review here.

I also spent some time talking to PJ on the Meeple2Meeple podcast. I go into a bit of the detail behind where Word Dungeon came from and also waffle on about indie publishing on Kickstarter. 

UK Review Circle reviews

Timeline

About me

I'm Joe. I'm an indie games designer who lives by the sea in the North of England. Every Friday you'll find me at my FLGS playing and designing games. When I'm not there, I'm arguing about what game to play with my wonderful children. Word Dungeon was the first of many games to share with you wonderful humans and Word Dungeon Series Two is the next chapter.

The games may have fallen out of my head, but there's a dungeon full of people who have supported me to bring Word Dungeon to life - thank you. And everyone who might back or share this campaign. Thank you too.

I'm always up for a chat, so please find me on social media @joe_plays_games or drop me an email joe@whatifgames.co.uk if you'd like to talk about games.