Rat Queens - Slay Evil, Loot Evil, Cherish the Memories!
From Rat Queens creators Kurtis Wiebe & Roc Upchurch - a game that the Queens always deserved! A fast-paced, co-operative deck-building tower defence game where friendship makes you stronger and villain slaying makes you richer.
In 2019, the mega-hit Image Comics series Rat Queens, was licensed to a publishing company and made into a game. It raised over 300k on Kickstarter. It never came out.
In 2024, writer and co-creator Kurtis Wiebe seized the rights back and went on a quest to make good by the fans that had believed in the game based on his comic series. Like the fans, he had received nothing, but in this age of villains, it's the only right thing to do.
With his company, Talespinner Games, he and co-creator Roc Upchurch have taken the base game and ignited it with the passion, energy and love that formed Rat Queens all the way back in the beforetimes of 2012. It is now the game that was promised, and this new Talespinner Games campaign will be sending a free copy of the game to every original backer. A tall order, but the right one, and they're gonna need some help...
Now, let's talk about the damn game already!
Rat Queens - A Co-Op Game of Violence, Loot and Laughs
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Invest in our project and save coin on one of our campaign add-ons!
The Campaign Saga - Vengeance on Villains!
Welcome to the Campaign Saga! A tragic tale of betrayal unfolds in our Pre-Launch Campaign to our upcoming game, Rat Queens. A story which will reach its conclusion at the campaign's full end! Uncover the plot, get a sneak peek of the game and its components, and join our quest to get Vengeance on Villains!
Heard Enough?
I like the game and I like the story! I want to join this quest!
The Launch - September 8th, 2026
Betty's locked into a time bubble and has no sense of the flow of days. Our campaign is being built for our big release in September. And, in the meantime, you can join the early adventure by participating in our Pre-Launch campaign called Social Dynamics!
The Social Campaign - Choose your Own Adventure
We have some fun events, prizes and Q&A's happening over on our Discord. Here's the details for how YOU can get involved.
Latest from the Creator
Talespinner Games
7 days ago
Opportunity Knocks - The Rulebook! (Preview Draft)
Above is a screencap of the Rat Queens - Vengeance on Villains Rulebook! As we've talked about quite frequently, the base game design was fully completed when we took over and began our work last year. The rulebook required a major overhaul, however, as there were numerous drafts and all the art was from the unshipped version of the game, cut from old comics and a wide variety of artists.
This is a wholesale full revision, again utilizing the same game design, but with a draft on all the language and terms coming from Rat Queens writer, Kurtis Wiebe. He also put this together in Canva, and is no visual designer or artist, so this is a temporary version without the almighty powerful hand of Roc Upchurch's artistic direction. So, it is good to remember that this is not the final version, but an in-progress preview to prove we have something solid and fantastic in the works.
It was an interesting process, to take a lot of the more generic terms that were in the original rulebook (Ex: Monster Special Ability) and ignite it with Rat Queens codex. The aforementioned example became, in this pass, Dick Moves. A reminder of how important even language and word choice becomes in what might be seen as a small detail.
Overall, the promise is: We are working on the Rat Queens game it should've always been. And we hope this is only the beginning of game projects like this from us at Talespinner Games. Incredible, thematic designs, gorgeous art and strong writing.
Edit: Thanks to designers Sen, Erica and Alara for collating all the data, revisions and rulebook breakdown with which we could not have done on our own.
Opportunity Knocks - Rat Queens on Tabletop Simulator!
Now Available!
We've uploaded the playable demo of the game on Tabletop Simulator. It features the game rules and the most current (though unfinished) art that will allow you to play through a full game experience from beginning to end.
The game design is complete, we are making this available as a means to try out the game to see what you think and get a taste of what we have in store for you and future backers!
We welcome comments in the workshop, or in our Discord. Any and all feedback is appreciated!
This Friday, July 17th at 12pm noon PST, join our host, Rat Queens co-creator Kurtis Wiebe, in a live playtest of the game. Enter as either a participant or a viewer and get a feel for the game and ask the host any and all questions you might have about the game, the Rat Queens universe or how he nearly broke his foot over the weekend!
If you wish to play, you must have a copy of Tabletop Simulator on Steam. All login details will be provided before the event launches at noon PST.
In 2023, the creators of Rat Queens finished the comic series with an oversized 72 page single issue called Sisters, Warriors, Queens. It was a labour of love worked on the sidelines and in free time over the course of several years, and for both Roc and Kurtis, it was the bow on a 12 year journey that began with a chance meeting on a street corner in New York.
An end to the story of Rat Queens. Or so they thought.
In our last Creative Quest, we discussed how the failed Kickstarter campaign from 2021 required a significant overhaul from the creators and Talespinner Games. The production files were not only a mess, full of glaring typos and mixed up copy, but the creative was tonally broken and thematically hollow.
Finding closure on the comic series, with a spiritual send-off of sorts, meant a return to the characters and world of Rat Queens would require some serious consideration. What made Rat Queens special in the beginning? What had drawn the fans to the queens all those years ago?
Style. Tone. Personalities.
To do it right, the creators had to return to the very beginning.
Exploration
Primarily, the early concept work (which lasted several weeks of iteration) tried to capture the tone of what Rat Queens was heavily influenced by in its inception: Roller Derby Girl Energy. Our first expression was a mix of Roller Derby and Jamie Hewlett poster graphic style.
We found this approach led to some strange disconnects, primarily in that it felt cold, stiff and quite serious. Which, while having a general nice aesthetic, was not true to Rat Queens. It was missing something integral: Warmth and explosive energy.
Roc did a quick pass on this feeling, and it felt closer to truth.
Still, it wasn't quite right. There was an assumption that capturing Rat Queens in a game aesthetic would be straightforward, especially with the creators working directly on it.
This was a wild wakeup call, and took far more effort than we could have expected.
We struggled significantly in the early months of trying to capture the essence of Rat Queens in this format. Over and over again, Roc and Kurtis were asking: What IS Rat Queens. In the comic, it was easy to capture, with the use of character acting, voice and story. But, to distill it down?
A small terror.
A Box of Answers
This led to seeking results in the game box itself, which went through several iterations as well. First, we tried to capture the general tone through four expressions.
Once complete, no one on the team agreed on which was the best. Of the four contributors, everyone picked a different cover. They all hit the right note but for different reasons, yet none fully captured this unknowable truth completely. In the end, we decided on #3, as it had a fun, friendly and warm feeling, which was what the game itself felt like to play.
We tested varations of that new direction.
Once again, no one agreed on which was best suited to capture Rat Queens as a game. Perhaps, at this point, we had too many cooks in the kitchen, and it felt the game's aesthetic was evading us. Both Roc and Kurtis struggled to understand what was missing.
In the end, it was the original design that was chosen and completed. This particular choice, made before Talespinner Games officially came on to participate in the development, led to a directional error that would only be saved by the backers of the first campaign, which we will discuss in our next Creative Quest.
A few quick tests of Version 1 of the reimagined Rat Queens.
And, the final cover, which we announced in 2025. The version we had planned to simply finish and get to the original backers as efficiently as possible. Which, we will also discuss in the next Creative Quest.
Years Later
The learning here, since early 2025, has been significant. Everything you see now of the game has gone through an incredible iteration process, where even the creators of Rat Queens themselves, have genuinely struggled to capture. It is not lost on any of us how fortunate we are to have the game design completed coming onto the project, mechanics which truly capture the spirit and energy of Rat Queens.
We believe, where it stands now, our Rat Queens board game is the real McCoy, the authentic game experience from top to bottom, and, that journey's been a tough one, at times.
As most know or are aware, in 2021, there was a successful crowdfund by a third party utilizing the same base game as designed by Sen-Foong Lim and Erica Bouyouris. And, since we're all here now, it is obvious the Rat Queens - To the Slaughter Kickstarter failed to ship. In the intervening years, many backers reached out to Rat Queens co-creator, Kurtis Wiebe, to look into what was going on.
He did, and upon finding many glaring and serious issues, of most important that there was never going to be a shipped game, and perhaps even more worrying, that with the prepared files he saw, should that game have shipped, no one would've been happy.
Behind the scenes, a rescue effort came into play. Not simply to find a means to ship the game, but to do a complete creative direction overhaul so that the excellent game design matched the real flavour of Rat Queens, which was sorely missing.
Bland Creative
For Kurtis, what bothered him the most was that at best, the game he was handed felt like a generic D&D battler. An an example, here are four monster cards from the production files.
Four different enemies, four different artists, of which all pieces had been cut from various issues of the comic series. Of note, also, a distinct lack of characterization; no names or flavour text.
The collection of enemies spoke to what Kurtis and Roc felt was an issue across the entire project: The spirit of Rat Queens did not exist outside the gamplay.
The Rat Queens Voice
Sticking with the monsters as a guiding star for this overview, it was here that the creative direction really took hold. Kurtis spent time with the base game design and recognized three monster groups. Instead of a 'type', the idea instead became three factions of villains, in three degrees and waves of difficulty, culminating in their boss arriving to flatten the town of Palisade.
Rat Queens is deeply rooted in satire, not just fantasy, but in our world generally. So, Kurtis and Roc got to work. Above is the thematic structure and narrative design by Kurtis and handed over to Roc. Almost like little mini-scripts to inspire the new villain cast. Instead of recycled ideas and images from the comic, they created a massive new group of enemies and their bosses, specifically for their version of Rat Queens.
Pictured are three new villains, one from each faction; Harem of Helga, Beans Brigade and Delectable Delight. (UI not final)
Big Bad Boss
The three bosses were perhaps the most glaring for the creators, and once again, a real opportunity to beat the ever living Rat Queens into the project. An example that best reveals this is through what in the original game was simply, "Troll Girlfriend". Cropped art, literally no personality or even name to the boss, and fairly standard attack titles.
And then, an example of what happens when the creators of the property infuse every layer of the project with their voice. They replaced the generic text panels with comic book style shots and flavourful copy to ramp the comedy and satire that is perfectly Rat Queens.
A Rat Queens Game, Skin and Bones
What is laid out above is a quick guide into the transformation that came out of the failed crowdfund where the property was licensed out to a third party, to when the creators took over to create a brand new campaign from the ashes of the old. It is, generally, an insight into what had been done, which other than the excellent game design, was Rat Queens in name only, and the work that has taken nearly a year of development to be the right and proper brand.
A New Campaign
For all intents and purposes, with Talespinner Games (created by Kurtis Wiebe) taking over full time in January, 2026, this is a brand new game and campaign. In future updates, we will talk about the original development done going back to early 2025, and how that led to a full commitment from Talespinner Games, and more importantly, the Rat Queens creative team Kurtis and Roc.
Many current followers of our upcoming campaign, Rat Queens - Vengeance on Villains, are veterans from a previous campaign that was abandoned by the parent company and left for dead. This new campaign by Rat Queens co-creator, Kurtis Wiebe, and his company, Talespinner Games, seeks to honour the pledges of those backers, while also drawing in a whole new audience that might've missed the first, or never even heard about it.
To honour those pledges, we need this upcoming campaign to fund, which includes the cost of making things right by our original backers from 2021.
This relies on word of mouth. Since we have a strong army (1650 followers!) already mustered, we hope to turn to the aid of everyone signed up to earn more followers (and hopeful backers) so that we have a good chance at a success story for all, and finally put a bow on this long, drawn out saga.
Yes, we need your help, but we're going to make it a bit of fun while we're at it, and toss out some prizes in the process.
At the bottom of the Launch Party comic scroll, we mention Social Dynamics. Here's how it works:
Friendship Tokens - What are They Good For?
Starting today, and moving forward, we will begin tracking Friendship Tokens through three main categories: Recruiting, Competitions and Playtest/Q&A over at our collaborative Miro board. There, you can find the details about how each of these categories works.
The winning team with the most Friendship Tokens at the end of the campaign will determine which of the four Rat Queens will decide the fate of Gus the Good in the upcoming, original comic book story that progresses alongside the Backerkit Campaign. Not only that, but the deciding Queen will unlock UNIQUE rewards that will be added to the final game components, fitting her personality and story resolution.
This is our bizarre, over-the-top answer to stretch goals meets choose your own adventure!
Recruiting - How Does it Work?
Did you recommend a friend and they followed the campaign? Here's the process your recruit needs to follow to claim your Friendship Token (1 per recruit) for this incredible deed.
We want this to be a fun and exciting campaign, of not only having some real say in the comic story and in-game unlockables, but in everyone coming together to redeem this son of a bitch. For our best recruiters, we are giving away some prizes on top of the whole Social Dynamics community competition.
Our Top Three Recruiters will win some prizes for their efforts.
Let the Games Begin!
Social Dynamics is now live! You can visit the Miro, check in every Friday for updates to the Friendship Token Count and drop something onto your team's collage space for a bit of fun.
Let's kick this quest off in style, right the hell now!
