Daniel (@dungeondive) opens with a complaint that has aged well: Kickstarter has drifted from funding small independent creators toward generating hype for large print runs stuffed with plastic. Forgotten Depths, from Void Night Games, is his evidence — a campaign that failed, discovered by him two days before it closed. He wrote to designer Peter Albertson, asked for a prototype, and made this video to give the game the attention he thinks it deserves.
The pitch is literary before it is mechanical. Albertson cites C.J. Cherryh’s Morgaine saga and Moorcock’s Elric; Daniel, struck by cover art he compares to Mœbius and Miyazaki’s Nausicaä, starts the Elric books again mid-setup and admits he loves it when games send him to novels and novels send him back to games.
What makes the design unusual is that you are a cartographer first. Tiles are laid one at a time to build the floor, and nothing is resolved until you choose to resolve it — but if you can ever no longer place a tile, you lose. Open-circle nodes must be connected into set shapes to unlock legendary locations; each hero carries a personal treasure deck, so the wizard finds spells where the fighter finds arms. Combat is card columns, no dice. Even in pencil-sketch prototype form, he calls its future incredibly promising.
Does making map-building the puzzle — lay tiles freely, resolve only what you choose, lose if you run out of room — beat the usual reveal-a-tile-and-step-into-it crawl?