A fantasy TTRPG about insatiable hunger in a blighted land, inspired by Hollow Knight, Bloodborne, Dark Souls, and Elden Ring.
We aim to start shipping physical rewards by June 2026. Digital rewards for already-existing books will be sent when orders are locked down (July 2025). Once they're ready, all other digital rewards will be made accessible (estimated Q2 2026).
Pre-order sales are final. Shipping will be charged closer to fulfillment. You can check estimated shipping pricesHERE (Shipping and Fulfillment section)
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Final PDFs are now available!
6 days ago
– Wed, Sep 23, 2026 at 06:01:51 AM
Hello, Dowsers!
Everything is now with the printer for sampling ahead of final manufacturing. Which is why today you get…
You'll receive these files based on what you backed during the campaign, if you filled in your survey (you didn't? Do it NOW). For clarity, we've noted which item each file belongs to:
Core Book v1.0: the release version of the Core Book. Included with every box and with the standalone PDF.
Dirge of the Dust King v1.0: the release version of the lore book. Included with every box and with the standalone PDF.
Escape the Mud Fields v1.0: the release version of the introductory campaign. Included with every box and with the standalone PDF.
Solo Mode Playbook: it's finally ready! Included as a digital file if you own Dirge of the Dust King.
Companions: the 12 Companions used in Solo Mode. Included if you own Dirge of the Dust King.
Pregen Characters for Escape the Mud Fields: 5 ready-made characters for the introductory campaign. Included as a digital file with every box and with the standalone PDF of Escape the Mud Fields.
Updated Class and Origin sheets (v1.1): included with the Core Book. This is a minor update: we noticed some Rank boxes were missing from every Class, and that's now fixed.
Project Status
All 87 files (can you believe it?) that make up Bitter Chalice have been reviewed and approved by the manufacturer and are now in the sampling phase. The manufacturer will assemble a prototype of every component, just as it will look in the final game, and ship it to us for approval. Once we sign off, they'll start producing the copies that will be shipped to you.
The exact timeline is still a bit of a mystery, but the good news is that samples for some items are already done (see this update), so we don't expect this step to take long.
Next month we're meeting the manufacturer in person at Essen Spiel. By then I hope to have a clear timeline for the end of manufacturing and at least a rough idea of shipping dates. The geopolitical situation remains very complex, and we'll have to work around it.
What Else?
We've started pre-production on our next game, Royalty, which has a very different vibe from Bitter Chalice. We'll give it a proper introduction once there's a bit more to show and we've wrapped up a few open items. In the meantime, you can follow the project on BackerKit Crowdfunding. It’s all placeholder, but you can get the gist of it.
That's all for today. Pop by our Discord if you have any feedback!
Telegram: Get quick updates straight to your device.
Instagram: See behind-the-scenes content and more.
Class & Origin Sheets + Status Tracker
about 1 month ago
– Fri, Aug 21, 2026 at 01:45:45 AM
Hello, Dowsers!
We're deep into preparing the files for print. Read more below!
Today's Downloads
Depending on what you backed during the campaign, you'll receive up to 3 set of files today (look for a Backerkit email with download links):
The Class and Origin sheets (included with the Core Book). Finally you'll be able to create characters! These took a while to finalize because they weren't up to date with all the improvements we made to the rules. It's almost 60 pages total, and we wanted to make sure to revise it well before sending it out.
The GM screen (included for anyone who purchased a Standard or Deluxe Edition)
A new accessory, the Status Tracker (included with the Core Book). This will also be included as a physical punchboard in all boxes. While this wasn't initially planned, we know that things can get pretty hectic in battle, and some Challenges (bosses especially) can inflict various Statuses on multiple characters. These Statuses all expire at different times, often hours of gameplay after an encounter has ended, and without some aid it can become difficult for the GM to keep track of everything. So we came up with a solution: a circular tracker where you can place Status tokens of different colors (one per player, up to 5) on the time of day when the Status expires. Every time an Hourglass is added to the Sundial on the map of the Blighted Lands, the Interruption Token (the black one in the image) moves forward on the tracker. A Status ends when the Interruption Token reaches the time of day where the colored token is placed. We think this greatly eases the management of Statuses, especially when Players can't get rid of them during a Rest or through other arcane means. We've left cut lines on the PDF if you'd like to go the PnP way. We recommend opening it with Acrobat Reader.
Here's an example of how that will work
Project Status
We're aggressively closing files for print now. All of the above have already been sent for sampling, and we're in the final phases of retouching the books. We've implemented hundreds of small improvements, clarifications, and corrections compared to the Beta, to give you the best game possible.
Companions for the Solo Mode are ready but will be released in a future update, because they're useless without the Solo Mode Playbook, which is the very last thing that's missing. We have a solid draft, but we're postponing finalizing it until everything that needs to go to print is ready. It's not only that the project has a lot of game-related files to prepare — there are also extra things to take care of, like designing the boxes, download codes, the info paper for the back of the boxes, etc. So yeah, we're not there yet.
Some of you will notice that on the back of the Status Tracker there's alsosome text in Italian: we're taking the opportunity of this print run to also print items that will be compatible with that edition, which isn't the focus of this campaign and is a problem for 2027 us. But the fact remains that some accessories will be the same, so we're trying to make them as compatible as possible now and avoid a second print run later.
What else?
We hope you had a chance to at least skim through the Beta files and get a general idea of the game, even if we know that most of you will really check everything out once the boxes show up at your door. We're trying to find a good balance between doing things fast and doing them well, and we're more or less on track to have everything in production within the next two weeks. How long production will take remains to be seen, but so far our partner has been very responsive.
Telegram: Get quick updates straight to your device.
Instagram: See behind-the-scenes content and more.
Production videos
2 months ago
– Thu, Jul 23, 2026 at 07:06:43 AM
Hello, Dowsers!
This is a quick update to share a few production sample videos we just received for Bitter Chalice, specifically showing off the maps, stickers, dice, and meeples.
You can watch them [HERE], [HERE], and below if you're reading on Kickstarter:
Reminder & Next Steps
We plan to lock down the books with final revisions and a few minor additions during the first half of August. If you've started reading the beta PDFs and spotted anything that needs tweaking, please drop a note in our Discord, channel #bitter-chalice-typos.
A few of you have also asked where to find the Classes and Origins: those are located on the sheets currently being finalized (see screenshots below). We will share those files as soon as they are ready to go!
• Telegram: Get quick updates straight to your device.
• Instagram: See behind-the-scenes content and more.
BETAs of all books now available!
3 months ago
– Thu, Jul 02, 2026 at 07:49:26 AM
Hello, Dowsers!
The day has finally come: all three Bitter Chalice books are now available as BETA PDFs.
What's a BETA?
Essentially, the 97% ready form of the books, before a final-final-FINAL polish pass before printing.
Can I help with the polish if I find something weird?
Yes! You're still likely to find some typos and layout glitches in there — we had to ship these files at some point, but they could use another re-read. Page numbers will be marked as "xxx" because we confirm those at the last possible moment, to avoid page shifts and other surprises. And if you feel some sections need clarification, NOW is the time to tell us: you can do so on our Discord server, channel #bitter-chalice-typos. We'll have about 5 weeks before things need to be locked down and sent to print.
Your help here is crucial: we've worked on this game for over 6 years, and besides having only a finite number of eyeballs, some issues might be invisible to us by now but obvious to someone with fresh eyes.
The Core Book is complete, and the game is in its semi-final form, but we haven't yet finished the layout for the Class and Origins Playbooks, which are necessary to play. That's next on our list. For the final file, besides extra polishing, we'll also add an analytical index (which couldn't be compiled until this file was ready) and a list of illustrations with descriptions.
Dirge of the Dust King is complete. We'll add a list of illustrations with descriptions in the final file. Solo Mode needs a couple more digital files to be fully usable: the Solo Mode Playbook and the Companion sheets. We'll get to these next, since they're not critical for moving ahead with the print. If you are planning to play in Solo Mode first and would prefer not to know what might happen in the game, we strongly recommend that you read Chapter 7 of this book first, as it explains what constitutes a spoiler. (Yes there’s a note about it on the Core Book too, but just in case you miss it).
Escape the Mud Fields is complete and in its semi-final form, but like the Core Book, we still need to finish the pregen characters you'll need to play. As with the others, the final file will get another polish pass and a list of illustrations at the end.
Support digital files needed to play: with the Core Book you'll get two versions of the map of the Blighted Lands (one for the GM, one for players), location stickers to print and cut (fair warning: they're only stickers if you print them on sticker paper, otherwise you'll want to wait for the box), tokens to print and cut, and a map specific to Escape the Mud Fields. The missing files mentioned above will come in a future update, once they're actually done.
Note: Maps and tokens are sized according to what you’ll find in the final box of the game, meaning that the map is an A2 (420 x 594 mm, 16.5 x 23 inches), and tokens are proportional to that. If you plan to print things at home, you will probably want to resize them according to the size of the map you are printing. Most printers offer this option in the print dialogue box.
What else?
Well, we hope you like what we've tried to do here. Bitter Chalice is our most complex project yet, and it hasn't always been easy — but I think it might be something special, and dare I say, even a little innovative? Time will tell.
Happy reading, and share your thoughts on our Discord server.
• Telegram: Get quick updates straight to your device.
• Instagram: See behind-the-scenes content and more.
June Update, the Books are Almost Done
4 months ago
– Sun, Jun 07, 2026 at 07:38:53 AM
Hello Dowsers,
It's June, almost summer, and work on Bitter Chalice is entering its hot phase. How appropriate.
Project Status
The Core Book layout is 90% complete. I was hoping to share the full Beta with this update, but we need a little more time. The latest chapter (Challenges) required a particularly intricate layout (lots of formatting details to get right) which slowed things down. All that remains now is the Appendix, which is mostly tables. In the meantime, while Matteo Sciutteri continued laying out new pages, Enrico did a first polish pass and flagged around 250 improvements: typos, missing or incorrect translations, and so on. This is completely normal; each pass typically turns up a few hundred comments, much to the delight of our layout artists. The upside is that by the time the Beta reaches you, most of those fixes will already be in.
Bringing the other Matteo (Carioni) on board has made a real difference: the second book's layout is now complete at just under 120 pages. We could technically send that Beta now, but sending the expansion before the Core Book feels a bit backwards, so we'll release both together with the next update, using the extra time for additional polish.
I'm 70% of the way through translating the third and final book, Escape the Mud Fields. In early May I had to shift focus briefly to keep the rest of the team moving without bottlenecks, but I'm confident I can finish the remaining 30% within the next ten days. Once done, Matteo Carioni jumps straight into layout.
Below are some new pages from the books. I tried to pick pages with the fewest spoilers possible, but remember, everything is a spoiler, so look away if you're not the GM!
Production is officially moving
This past week we sent the first batch of files to our production partner to kick off samples and prototypes — maps, stickers, tokens, meeples, dice, and bookmarks. We're working with Boda Games, the team behind acclaimed titles like Arcs, Hegemony, Everdell, Onitama, and more. Safe to say we're in good hands on component quality.
