Twisty Little Passages is a game book of dungeon crawl puzzle adventures, divided into story chapters that are broken down into a sequence of campaign areas or levels. Each campaign is a Euro-style puzzle with a fantasy theme and setting, which is played through solo and can also be engaged with as a group. The campaigns have a legacy feel where story, equipment, stats and game mechanics build atop one another and progress from one campaign to the next.

Each campaign area is laid out on a two-page spread, where the left page presents story and a description of enemies, equipment and special items, terrain and distinct properties of the area. The right page displays a dungeon map and a space for tracking stats and inventory.

Carefully manage resources as you explore the dungeon and fight monsters. Get keys to open doors, find magic elixirs to boost health, and acquire weapons and armor to improve attack and defense stats and reduce damage from future enemy encounters. Prepare to fight a deadly boss at the end of each area to win and advance the story.

The book pages are laminated and you track your play progress, inventory and stats, and enemy encounters right on the page with a dry-erase pen.

Note: This is a pre-order. Twisty Little Passages is slated for an April 2020 delivery.

Less than 48 hours remain to snag yourself a copy of Twisty Little Passages at a huge discount off MSRP!

Everyone pledging for one or more copies of the book will receive all unlocked bonus and stretch goals.

Upgraded heavy-duty 10 pt card stock glossy laminated pages!

All physical book backers also receive a free digital copy for print-and-play!

US, EU, Canada, and Australia customs-friendly shipping!

Group backers can combine their pledges to receive a big discount on shipping!

Twisty Little Passages is a solo game book that is a unique blend of puzzle and dungeon crawler in a classic tabletop fantasy adventure setting. It features a multi-chapter campaign story that progresses through a series of over two dozen illustrated dungeon maps, where each area is a hand-crafted puzzle. Fight monsters, acquire keys to open doors, get life-boosting elixirs, powerful equipment and enchanted items, and defeat the boss at the end of each level. Use your wits to find the right path through each area and survive. Solve each puzzle to move forward with the story.

Twisty Little Passages is a game of full-color, fully-illustrated thematic puzzles. Engage your imagination in a series of dungeon crawls and enjoy the experience of interacting with a real book at the same time. Play it easily wherever you go!

If you like puzzles, mazes and dungeon crawl adventures, you'll find this a uniquely engaging experience!

Special challenge areas will contain an extended layout, with multiple story pages tied to epic two-page map spreads.

To play, you draw right on the laminated dungeon maps with a fine-tipped dry-erase pen to track your progress as you explore, find treasure, track stats and inventory, defeat enemies and uncover the secrets of solving each area. Survive each puzzle without getting stuck or running out of health. It may require multiple attempts to find the solution to a puzzle, and it's easy to restart your progress by wiping the page to start again.

BONUS MATERIAL: We're including a section in the back of the book with spoiler-resistant progressive hints for all the puzzles to keep difficulty balanced for all players, plus another section with full solutions.

Listen to a six-minute segment reviewing Twisty Little Passages in the On Board Games podcast with Isaac Shalev (starts at 5:05).

Rules of play

Learn the basic rules of how to play through the puzzles here:

Prototype rules for download (PDF)

Print-and-play versions of demo Puzzles 1-1 through 1-5

After reading the rules above, try to solve these introductory puzzles from the book in order:

Demo Puzzle 1-1: Kradra Prison -- keys and locks tutorial

Demo Puzzle 1-2: Underground Caverns -- combat tutorial

Demo Puzzle 1-3: Abandoned Hub -- armor tutorial

Demo Puzzle 1-4: Roach Nest -- multiple equipment pieces tutorial

 Demo Puzzle 1-5: Kradra Prison Escape -- multiple enemies tutorial 

There are 27 standalone puzzle areas (including unlocked stretch goals) total in the book, plus world map and secret meta-puzzle stretch goals.  After the brief introductory puzzles featured above in the tutorial chapter, each puzzle thereafter becomes larger, increasingly more involved, and more complex and challenging.  Get ready to put on your thinking caps!

We designed each puzzle to be played in about a single sitting.  Expect to play each puzzle beyond the tutorial for around 15-90 minutes, some shorter and some longer, with some especially challenging areas that can take longer.  You can pause and continue play at any time, simply closing the book to save your place in the current area.

Total play time to solve all puzzles is estimated at 15-30 hours.

The final production version of Twisty Little Passages will feature multiple upgrades over the prototype preview copies you see here and in videos, including:

• Metal wire-binding, not plastic spiral bound
• Offset printing (no white border along the edge of the page)
• Plus all unlocked bonus and stretch goals listed above, including heavy-duty 10 pt card stock glossy laminated pages!