Zhenya’s Wonder Tales is a set of 6 card games retelling dark, Slavic-inspired fairy stories in 1-2 hours. Play a prince, a werewolf, an orphan, a monster hunter, and more to make difficult choices that drive characters towards uncertain endings.
Zhenya’s Wonder Tales is a set of 6 card games retelling dark, Slavic-inspired fairy stories in 1-2 hours.
It is a game that incorporates elements of Slavic and Baltic folklore to tell new, hair-raising tales about magical adventures in an eastern Europe that never was. The art firmly situates the players in this fairy tale realm that is similar, but not quite the same, as what they are probably used to and expecting.
Enter a dark world of Slavic- and Baltic-inspired fairy stories. Your perfectly innocent and kind-hearted host, Zhenya, will guide you. Fall in love with a bear. Bow before the King of the Snakes. Marry a shape-changing fairy —or fight one to the death. Search for your stolen skin, high above Devil’s Bridge. Attend the funeral of Night and console their children, Dawn and Dusk.
Each wonder tale includes a set of 22 cards that serve as illumination, inspiration, and grim predestination. As you play, you and your friends will be asked to make choices that will shape the direction of the tale toward happiness—or ruin. A single tale takes about an hour to reach its often surprising, but always satisfying, conclusion.
Old Zhenya is waiting for you! Won’t you come in, have a hot glass of fireweed tea, and tell a wonder tale together?
Zhenya’s Wonder Tales comes with a deck of 135 full-color playing cards in a lovely, compact, magnetic-closure box (similar to the one we used for Desperation).
The deck includes six replayable one-shot games of 22 cards each, with glorious, evocative illustrations by award-winning artist Momatoes, and includes the cards you need to tell a story weirder than anything the Brothers Grimm ever cooked up, in about an hour.
Together with a clear set of instructions, including advice for solo and large group play, Zhenya’s Wonder Tales packs a lot of fun into the box.
In addition, we'll be including a custom 8.5 x 11" canvas map of Zorovna in each box, illustrated by Sovanny Vorn and featuring all the locations from the Wonder Tales!
In Zhenya’s Wonder Tales, each player portrays a character in the chosen tale, who probably has an interesting secret and definitely has three story beats—moves—that need to be triggered. Moves are big, classic events that everyone will be playing toward, like Klára’s “Fall in love with Ondřej” in The Bird Rivals. We know love will take flight, but how? And when? It will be different every time you play, but it’s a fairy story, and certain things just happen in fairy stories—like falling in love, maybe with the wrong person.
Together, the move cards form a narrative framework you and your friends can explore together. There are sixteen move cards on the table, and by the time most or all of them have been triggered, your wonder tale will definitely be nearing its satisfying (and probably horrifying) conclusion. Since these cards are public, you will always know where to focus your collective attention and gameplay—and where in the rhythm of the tale you are at the moment.
The end result is an easy-to-understand procedure for reliably (and quickly!) creating fun and strange folktales with your friends. No two tellings will be the same, just as no two Wonder Tales are the same. But hey, take your time. Tell them at your own pace. Zhenya’s patient. She knows you’ll be back…
There are lots of reasons to support this project.
Zhenya's Wonder tales was made by a scrappy little team that consistently produces award-winning work, including three Diana Jones Awards, so if you like to see indie developers making weird games thrive, support us.
Zhenya's Wonder Tales approaches folklore and fairy stories from a familiar but slightly left-field place—Slavic and Baltic tales are a little darker and a little stranger than what you may be used to. If you want to explore the unusual and, occasionally, macabre, support us.
Zhenya's Wonder Tales fills a delicious niche—it is a deep, replayable, self-contained roleplaying experience in about an hour. If you'd like a game you can pull out any time, with no prep, and thoroughly enjoy, support us.
Zhenya's Wonder Tales shares Bully Pulpit Games' interest in the grimmer side of human nature, so if you enjoyed Desperation, for example, you will feel right at home. If you like the stories of Angela Carter or Andrus Kivirähk or Alexander Afanasyev or even the Brothers Grimm, support us.
Zhenya's Wonder Tales is extremely straightforward and simple to play. It looks good on a table (or virtual table), and it is approachable to gamer and non-gamer alike. If you want to hook someone on roleplaying, it's a great place to start… by supporting us.
Zhenya's Wonder Tales is super solid. The game works flawlessly and has been rigorously playtested. If you like games that are fully baked to golden brown perfection, so do we—so please support us.
There's one final reason to support us, and we're a little reluctant to mention it. Zhenya told us you would, and if we're being totally honest, you don't want to disappoint Zhenya…
Is one copy not enough? Do you want to pledge with your friends to save on shipping? This add-on includes an additional physical edition of Zhenya's Wonder Tales (only available to backers receiving physical rewards).
Roll20 Code Add-on
This add-on includes a code that will unlock everything you need to play in Roll20, including rules, card text in handouts, illustrated cards in custom decks, and helpful hints for playing the games in a virtual environment. (You'll need a free Roll20 account to redeem product code and play.)
Zhenya’s Wonder Tales was created by Jason Morningstar and published by Steve Segedy. Together we run Bully Pulpit Games, and we've been creating and publishing award-winning games such as Fiasco, Star Crossed, Night Witches, The Warren, and Desperation. This is our ninth crowdfunding campaign.
"Jason's bottled lightning yet again. Zhenya's Wonder Tales is a sleek, lush, and immensely rewarding game. Meticulously researched to capture the dark, sprawling spirit of Eastern European folklore yet written and designed with calculated elegance, all you need is a few friends, a spare hour, and one deck of cards that contains everything you need to play: characters, relationship tensions, conflicting desires, and the various paths to their shared fate. Bully Pulpit doesn't miss!" – Jeeyon Shim, game designer
"Zhenya's is a blast to play and I was impressed at how well it supports a fun and compelling story in under an hour. The card based approach is beginner friendly and the specificity of the content generates strong narratives while still being highly replayable. It's an incredibly impressive game and I look forward to playing all of the stories once when it's released." – Randy Lubin, game designer
"Zhenya's is SO good, and such an interesting development of how to use PBTA style moves. So simple, so expandable, so stealable. You should get on this to play it, but also get on it if you're interested in cool new design tech." – Sam Dunnewold, host of the Dice Exploder Podcast
"A grim fairy tale distilled to the essence. Cool stuff starts happening instantly and doesn't let up. Wonderful!" – Michael Sands, Generic Games, designer of Monster of the Week
Our friends at Third Floor Wars had a whale of a time trying out Zhenya’s Wonder Tales, coming away pretty impressed and excited by the game’s potential. Check it out and let them know if you enjoyed the show!
We hate this as much as you probably do, but with the recent changes to the GPSR regulations, we can not currently ship to customers in European Union countries. We simply don't have the infrastructure in place to manage the reporting and costs at this time.
PRICES DO NOT INCLUDE SHIPPING
As you're all probably aware, shipping has become very expensive, and shipping and customs costs are always changing. The US government may implement tariffs and new regulations which may impact shipping costs.
For these reasons, all taxes and shipping costs will be charged after the campaign, when your package is ready to ship, though Backerkit. This will get you the most accurate rate based on the time we send and your location.
ESTIMATED SHIPPING COSTS
Estimated shipping to backers in the United States:
$10 per shipment
Estimated shipping to non-EU international customers:
$20 for the first copy of the game
$10 for each additional copy in the shipment
Taxes should be included, but are difficult for us to estimate at this time
Note: If you purchase additional add-on games from our Backerkit catalog, your costs will be higher.
If you have some friends and loved ones that you could share a shipment with, we encourage you to bundle additional add-on copies,allowing you to ship multiple copies to one address for a reduced cost.
We expect to deliver this project in October 2025.
Bully Pulpit Games has a long track record of successfully producing high-quality games. This project is modeled on our many previous successful crowdfunding projects, so we know how to manage the challenges of a campaign and deliver rewards on time.
Development: Zhenya's Wonder Tales is already written, playtested, edited, and laid out for print and digital releases. Now it is done to the final touches and making sure everything is as perfect as we can make it.
Printing: We’ll be printing with Panda Game Manufacturing again for this project, as we did for Desperation. While we don't expect any problems, shipping from overseas, especially during the current political climate, means that there is always a slight risk that unexpected fees or delayed cargo ships will cause issues. We will keep you informed as things unfold!
Shipping: We'll be using the same fulfillment service through our friends at Atlas Games that we do for our web store. Inevitably a few shipments will get lost or damaged but every customer should receive tracking information and we'll be following those shipments closely and making sure backers get what they pledged for during the campaign.
Transparency: Finally, we're committed to keeping you informed and being transparent about the process. If anything does go wrong, we'll let you know right away and tell you how we're going to fix it.
If you have any questions or concerns, please let us know!
