Years fly by like dead leaves. Everything is darkness. Everything is silence. You stand vigilant before the sarcophagus without thought or breath-such is your compulsion. You do not remember your name and still you watch. The flesh has fallen off your bones and still you watch.

And then one day there is light and motion and you weigh your bearded axe and raise your shield, lusting for the fray, eager to measure your skill against these tomb-robbing children so full of blood. You’ll never be alive again, but in this moment-in the chaos between violation and destruction-you truly live, and you remember what you once were, and you taste the sun.

The Skeletons flips the script on the classic dungeon crawl— here you play not the intruders, but the guardians, cursed to spend all of eternity defending a tomb. As time passes, both the tomb and its guardians will change. Ferocious battles are fought and won, and the skeletons slowly remember who and what they once were. Melancholy, introspective and spanning epochs, The Skeletons is unlike anything you’ve ever played.

The Skeletons is meditative structured freeform game for 1-6 players. You’ll need a few hours and a private space.

The printed edition is a 60 page, 6×9 booklet game that includes the rules for the basic game as well as variant settings by Jason Morningstar and Sara Williamson.


Released: 23 August 2022