A SOLO TTRPG where you take on the role of a sole survivor of a facility catastrophe. Map out the facility and combat entities while finding a means of ESCAPE!
You awake to the sound of a blaring emergency alarm in a patient roomof what seems to be an abandoned medical facility. You wonder how you got here, slept through all this noise, and what happened to everybody as you come to. Disoriented, you look down; you are wearing nothing but a hospital gown.
IT LURKS INSIDE is a SOLO mapping Tabletop Role-Playing Game by Alexei Vella, loosely based on games inspired by Dark Fort by Johan Nohr and Pelle Nilsson of MÖRK BORG fame, but instead of exploring a dungeon, you find yourself in a strange abandoned medical facility full of entities.
Using dice, pencils, paper, and this book, map out the facility, combat entities, and find a means of escape.
Explore up to 20 unique spaces. Encounter up to 12* unique entities you need to defeat to escape. Find and use up to 10 unique weapons and items. Collect up to 12 documents revealing insights/clues on what happened to the facility.
IT LURKS INSIDE (mock-up, subject to change)
DIAGRAMS
IT LURKS INSIDE contains all the rules needed to play.
IT LURKS INSIDE does NOT contain any AI-generated content.
CONTENT WARNING: Body Horror, Death, Monstrous Entities, Medical Procedures, Infection, Disease, & Violence.
IT LURKS INSIDE uses a unique combat system in which you choose which body part of an encountered entity you target with your weapon during COMBAT. This system is similar to the VATS system in Fallout, but on paper — the CORPUS system.
A big continued supporter of my work had the chance to sit down with the IT LURKS INSIDEplaytest rules and attempt to survive the facility. Let’s just say they started well off, but the SPREAD of INFECTION was too much, and they were killed by the INFECTED pretty quickly.
Here is the record of their failed attempt (the game did not fail; they failed to survive).
Video Games: Survival Horror,Lurks Within Walls, It Lurks Below, Lobotomy Corporation, Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Fallout, Carrion, The Last of Us, Outlast, BioShock, Half-Life, System Shock, Shin Megami Tensei, Darkwood, & Inside.
Films:Body Horror, The Stuff, The Thing, The Fly, 28 Days Later, Splinter, V/H/S Franchise, Beyond the Black Rainbow,& REC/Quarantine, Annihilation. Tabletop Games: Dungeon Crawlers, Fighting Fantasy, LIMINAL_, Mörk Borg, Dark Fort, Corny Groń, MIRU, & Korg.
Online Media: Mystery Flesh Pit National Park, Vita Carnis, Trevor Henderson, SCP Foundation—SCP-610—The Flesh that Hates, & Happy Meat Farms ARG.
WELCOME TO POCKETOPIA,a celebration of portable, easy-to-learn tabletop games featuring 50+ creators launching together on BackerKit from March 13 to April 3!
Here’s how you can earn exclusive event rewards:
Cross-Collab Freebies: Look for projects marked as Cross-Collab partners! Back both projects to earn a FREE reward from each creator. The more pairs you support, the more freebies you collect!
Pocketopia Dice Bag: Back 6 projects or more to unlock this exclusive reward, surveyed and shipped by BackerKit.
Rewards at a glance:
2 FREE rewards for every Cross-Collab pair you back (one from each creator!)
1 FREE limited edition POCKETOPIA2025 Dice Bag when you back 6+ projects
PRO TIP: Maximize your freebies by supporting Cross-Collab pairs! For example, support 3 Cross-Collab pairs (6 projects) to earn up to 6 exclusive FREEBIES while unlocking the Dice Bag!
*Only pledges to physical reward tiers or main digital offerings (if no physical items are offered) qualify towards earning these limited FREEBIES. Please refer to individual project pages for unlock requirements.
If you back both IT LURKS INSIDE and DESPAIR DILEMMA(collaboration partner), you will receive an exclusive pog/token/coin for each game. Otherwise, they are available as Add-Ons.
W.I.P.
I have worked on several personal projects, as pictured above, and for Max FitzGerald, providing logo, graphic design, and layout work for his ongoing miniature game project, Turnip28.
SHIPPING IS CHARGED AT THE END OF THE CAMPAIGN VIA BACKERKIT.
[Estimates (in USD) based on products of similar weight, including any potential stretch goals planned from within the United States]
US $9 - CA $8 - EU/UK $10 - ROW $16
Note: these are shipping estimates and are subject to change.
Unfortunately, Dark Gift cannot be shipped to the following countries at the current time: Afghanistan, Belarus, Brunei Darussalam, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Myanmar, Niue, Russian Federation, Syrian Arab Republic, Yemen, North Korea, and Israel.
Import fees, including tariffs, are the responsibility of the Backer. Check before backing.
All backers will be kept updated if any difficulties, delays, or problems arise during production. Should you have any questions, feel free to let us know.
Printing delays, delivery errors, and extra game development are the three most significant risks this project can pose.
