Game intel
The Secret of Weepstone
In a hand-drawn black and white dungeon crawler RPG inspired by classic D&D of the 80’s - Roll Dice, Fight Monsters, Loot Dungeons, Embrace Death, and unravel…
The Secret of Weepstone immediately caught my eye for one reason: it looks like someone animated the black-and-white margins of a battered first-edition DnD manual. Talesworth Game Studio is building an RPG that doesn’t just nod at tabletop roots-it lives there. Publisher DreadXP (the folks who helped turn The Mortuary Assistant into a cult hit) says it’s targeting PC in 2026, and if you care about dice-driven combat and ink-soaked style, this one’s worth watching.
Weepstone is set in a decaying village where Lord Byron lies bedridden, tormented by nightmares-classic gothic setup, but with a twist: you’re a random local, not a Chosen One. That’s refreshing. So many fantasy RPGs start you as a demigod-in-waiting; here, you’re scrabbling for survival in a place that’s already lost hope. The game runs turn-based combat with visible D20 rolls, and even mundane actions—tiptoeing past a trap or creaking up a staircase—can trigger checks. It’s the kind of friction that tabletop fans love, because the little moments become stories.
About that “action-focused ARPG” label tossed around: the combat is turn-based, so don’t expect click-to-loot Diablo pacing. My read is they’re promising brisk turns, snappy UI, and tactical choices that keep fights moving. If the devs can make dice feel punchy and readable, they’ll avoid the slog that sometimes plagues straight-from-tabletop systems on PC.
Baldur’s Gate 3 pushed D20 mechanics into the mainstream again, but most studios still sand down the randomness. Weepstone leans into it. Visible rolls, armor classes that actually matter, and positioning on a battlefield of traps and hazards—that’s old-school DNA. The eight-NPC party management and the expectation that they’ll die? That screams “plan for loss,” not “save-scum your way to perfection,” and it puts Weepstone closer to Darkest Dungeon than a power fantasy CRPG. When death feeds “Mortal Favors,” you’re designing your party with sacrifice in mind—grim, strategic, and very tabletop.
And the art direction deserves the spotlight. We’ve seen striking monochrome in World of Horror and the manuscript charm of Pentiment, but Weepstone’s scribbly, margin-doodle aesthetic taps a specific nostalgia—those early TTRPG illustrations that looked like someone’s talented friend drew them at the kitchen table. If Talesworth pairs that with clean UI contrast and readable combat states, this could be one of 2026’s most distinctive-looking RPGs instead of a cool concept that’s hard to parse in motion.
I’m into the “just a townsman” angle, the party churn, and the honest-to-dice D20 checks. That’s the stuff I want from a tabletop-inspired game. But there are questions. If we’re rolling for stairs and traps frequently, does that slow exploration to a crawl? A great tabletop DM abstracts the boring parts; a PC game needs similar pacing finesse. The pitch says “action-focused,” so let’s see that reflected in encounter design and turn speed.
Balance is another concern. RNG is fun until it’s all you see. Smart design uses randomness to create stories while letting player knowledge and positioning win the day over time. If every fight lives or dies on a single crit, that’s noise, not drama. Mortal Favors sound like the meta progression that keeps frustration in check—think unlocks that make subsequent runs richer without erasing the stakes—but the devil’s in the tuning.
Finally, the art’s monochrome austerity is a double-edged sword. It’s gorgeous, but can it communicate status effects, terrain hazards, and line-of-sight cleanly? World of Horror solved this with ultra-clear iconography; Darkest Dungeon used color and shape language aggressively. Weepstone will need its own readability grammar to make those “iron dice” roll results instantly meaningful.
DreadXP curates weird, memorable games, and pairing that sensibility with Talesworth’s pencil-and-ink vision is a smart match. 2026 is a long runway, which is both good and dangerous. Good, because systems-first RPGs need iteration. Dangerous, because the hype meter has plenty of time to outrun the feature set. If the team keeps showing real combat snippets, party management, and how Mortal Favors change the calculus over multiple expeditions, they’ll keep the right audience engaged—the players who don’t mind losing soldiers if it means winning the war.
For now, I’m cautiously excited. Weepstone looks like the rare D20 video game that respects the tabletop’s messy humanity rather than hiding it behind smooth edges. If Talesworth can make the dice sing without turning every step into a coin flip, this could be something special.
The Secret of Weepstone is a monochrome, hand-sketched D20 RPG where you manage a fragile party and expect casualties. The art is stellar, the tabletop mechanics are front and center, and the “Mortal Favors” system suggests smart roguelite bones. It’s one to watch for 2026—provided the team nails pacing, readability, and RNG balance.
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