Despair Dilemma is a GMless Tabletop Roleplaying Game designed to replicate the stories of Death Game narratives like Danganronpa, Zero Escape, Squid Game, and more. In these games, people are trapped in a life-or-death scenario and must fight, scavenge, or argue for the sake of their victory and survival. Players take on the role of the masterminds and narrative forces pushing the characters to the brink. 

Taking control of narrative forces like “The Massacre's Edge” and “The Traitor's Sabotage”, players will vie for control of the story and work to achieve the goals laid out on before them. Depending on the hand of cards you draw, you'll have access to different ways to manipulate the game and story as a whole.

You can try Despair Dilemma out now with the Free Locke Mansion Death Game Demo Kit, pitting the victims of a strange puzzle master against each other in a decadent mansion of clockwork. It's up to you and your friends to decide whether these unfortunate few will survive or meet an untimely death at the hands of someone they thought was their ally. 

Every pledge tier will give you access to the Prototype PDF of Despair Dilemma immediately once the campaign finishes and payments have been cleared! This means that you'll be able to start playing with the book as early as April 5th depending on how quickly cards clear! This version of the book is feature complete, with the exception of content unlocked by Stretch Goals and Backer Rewards, adjustments made from Playtesting and Community Feedback, and changes made to the Formatting as we Finalize Assets.

This playtesting and adjustment period is expected to last around three months and finish in July. From here, we'll release the final version of the game on Itch.io and get you a link to the final PDF copy of the game. This is also when we'll send files over to the factory to get reviewed and approved. This usually takes around one or two months, and once approved, the factory will get started ASAP.

Books should start leaving the warehouse sometime in September or October. Then, it's just a matter of time until your book (and any additional rewards) arrive in your region!

Backers who support both Despair Dilemma and our collaboration partner IT LURKS INSIDE will receive a FREE perspective marker or coin that you can use in both games! Two designs are available, one inspired by Despair Dilemma and another inspired by IT LURKS INSIDE. If you back both projects, you'll receive both designs! Otherwise, they're available as Add-Ons.

Despair Dilemma is a part of Pocketopia — a celebration of portable easy-to-learn tabletop games featuring 50+ creators launching together on BackerKit from March 13 - April 3!

Here’s how you can earn exclusive event rewards:

Rewards at a glance:

If you want to get a better look into the game, we have a number of streams you can check out where we and a number of other creators give Despair Dilemma a go!

Additionally, if you missed it, you can play the Demo Kit right now for free and see if the game's up your alley! We have a downloadable version with a complete printing kit available on Itch.io, and an online version available on TTS.

While the Shipping Industry is in an extremely volatile place amid political disputes and constant changes, we've partnered with one of the industries best fulfillment providers with Quartermaster Logistics. Previously they've provided shipping for companies like MCDM, Pandasaurus, The Dice Tower, and more! 

While shipping costs are always liable to change, their team has estimated the costs for us. Exact costs will depend on your location and Pledge Tier. Additional costs may be liable for add-ons:

Double Summon Games has already successfully published a TTRPG (Perfect Draw! A Card Game Anime TTRPG) of a similar scale and funded it through BackerKit. As the second project from our team, we're confident we can get everything done and get you a product you'll be happy with! No matter what, you'll be receiving a digital version of the in-progress book as soon as the campaign ends. The book is already complete and all that needs to be done is finalizing the layout and a bit more play testing. Once it's done, you'll get access through Itch almost instantly once we've made the page. The goal of this campaign is just to retroactively pay for the costs of commissioning art and time for development, as well as funding the production of physical games!

Additionally, we've been sure to set our funding target so that it genuinely acts as the minimum possible requirement for us to finish and get games in everyone's hands, even if that means doing a lot more work on our end to achieve. 

That said, we're fully aware of the challenges that could be coming. If significant issues are found, it's possible that the play testing period will need to be extended. Additionally, if the global situation changes, shipping and production may become significantly more difficult to achieve. There's a chance that someone on our team or supporting companies faces significant sickness or issues, and this would also require us to find new answers and delay things somewhat. 

With that said, we promise to make it our commitment to you that we're working to get everything done as well and as soon as possible (with priorities in that order). If you have any other questions regarding potential risks and challenges you're worried we may face, please feel free to reach out! We'd be happy to clarify any questions or help you through anything you're confused about!