Greetings and Well Met, Dungeon Delvers & Trivia Lovers
First off, we want to say how much we appreciate everyone’s support for Dungeon Doors and What’s That One…. Harrison and I (Mike) started this whole thing one night over sushi. We brought a couple of our D&D campaign buddies into the mix, and from there it grew into a game we somehow managed to sell all over the world. We’ve met amazing fans and talented designers along the way, which still blows our minds. A lot of folks assume Dynamic Gorilla is a larger company than it is. It’s honestly just a group of friends making games in our spare time.
When we kicked off this tabletop adventure back in 2017, we were diving into something brand new. Over the past eight years, we’ve learned a lot, made plenty of mistakes, and had a ton of fun. It’s been exhausting at times, but all of us would do it again, maybe with a few tweaks based on what we’ve picked up along the way.
By May of 2017, we had a Twitch Affiliate status for our weekly D&D game Tales from the Drowsy Dragon. It was an episodic series where Harrison and I would alternate as Dungeon Master each week, crafting a shared world and ongoing story for our group. Around the same time, we were invited to run some TTRPG content at a local convention called CritHit. That event ended up being a turning point for us. While we were there to host games, we were also exposed to a wide range of tabletop experiences we had never seen before. It opened our eyes to the broader world of tabletop gaming and sparked our deeper interest in both playing and designing games.
From 2017 to 2019, we brought Dungeon Doors to every Arizona con we could find. Later in 2019, we launched our Kickstarter. It funded on day one and quickly passed our goal, which felt incredible. But then 2020 hit. Like everyone else, we ran into shipping delays and manufacturing chaos. It took almost a year to get the game to my doorstep so we could start fulfilling orders.
Once the game was in players’ hands, we started thinking about, and tinkering with an expansion. But life got a lot busier. There were babies born, half the crew moved to new states, and our regular in-person sessions turned into short Discord calls once a week.
As we ran ads, and talked about Dungeon Doors on social media, we still heard from fans asking for the expansion, and we wanted to deliver, but time just wasn’t on our side. Instead of rushing something we didn’t have the capacity to finish well, we shifted gears.
That’s when What’s That One… came into the picture. It was something lighter we could work on in smaller chunks. Each of us could write questions for the cards independently, and then we’d review and finalize them together. It gave us a way to keep creating, even with our limited time. Looking back, maybe we should have focused on the expansion. But at the time, this path felt right.
What’s That One… funded on Kickstarter in April 2023, and shipped that December with minimal hiccups. That smoother experience gave us the confidence to revisit the Dungeon Doors expansion again.
In January 2024, we jumped back into the project. At that point, it was about 25% complete. We had a name we loved – Law & Disorder – and the core mechanics were figured out. The new system would add heroes, treasures, and rooms, along with a morality mechanic where players could follow Good or Evil paths. Balancing something like that takes a lot of time, and with only about 10 hours a month to dedicate, it was going to be slow. That said, the new mechanics were designed to be optional. Players could choose to incorporate the morality system for a deeper experience or simply enjoy the fresh content like new rooms, heroes, and treasures without changing the core gameplay.
We knew some fans had moved on. Every time we posted about the expansion, we’d get comments like “too late” or “not interested anymore.” Even so, we still wanted to make it happen. To rebuild trust and excitement, we decided to release three small expansions first, followed by Law & Disorder as a larger Kickstarter campaign. Because the printing costs for What’s That One… had been so manageable, we thought we could fund the smaller expansions ourselves without crowdfunding.
The first mini-expansion was Captain Catnip’s Crew. It featured six new heroes and about a dozen treasure cards, all centered around a seafaring theme. By February, it was nearly ready for artwork. But just as we were about to set sail, we spotted a storm on the horizon. Tariffs. The costs started to look unpredictable, and we weren’t sure if we could absorb them or if we’d need to raise prices. Crowdfunding such a small expansion wasn’t a realistic option either, so we dropped anchor for a bit to see how the winds would shift.
Now, looking at where we are, we’ve made the tough decision to stop production on all expansions. Once our current stock is gone, that’ll be the end of our tabletop journey. We’ve had a lot of long, heartfelt conversations about this, and we believe it’s the right decision for both our mental and financial health.
It’s not the ending we imagined. We would have loved to get Law & Disorder and the smaller expansions into your hands. We believe they would have added a lot to the game and the world we built. But we also recognize that for a long time, it felt like a will-they-won’t-they situation. We kept hinting at an expansion, hoping we’d find the time and momentum to deliver. In the end, we realized it was better to lay it to rest officially rather than continue building expectations we couldn’t meet.
Will you hear from us again? Probably. We still love playing and creating games (both the video and tabletop variety) but when it comes to designing and publishing tabletop games, we’re officially closing the book. It was a wonderful campaign, and we’re incredibly grateful for everyone who joined us and supported us along the way.
Thanks for adventuring with us. We’re going to use this time to get back to our TTRPG roots, reconnect with storytelling for the fun of it, and explore other creative worlds together, just like we did when this whole journey began.
Love,
The Dynamic Gorilla Crew
