Ab-Ba's Last Breath

A war between gods doesn't end just because they're no longer around. The lingering power of an ancient god of flame and darkness continues to create undead horrors. The curse of eternal night still lingers over a jungle older than any humanoid race. Still, the jungle persists.

Ab-Ba, whose treasure he coveted, poured her power into the jungle. Even without light life thrives, for her divinity was that of primordial life. Ancient alters still heal the recently dead. Crawlers still venture into the jungle. They search for the lost treasures of the long-gone goddess. Few ever return.

In the last century, the foreboding jungle seems different. None has seen the enormous form of the Dragon-eater in generations. Strange undead sometimes appear at the edge of the forest. Something is different, but that makes the locals even more leery of the unsettling locale.

Ab-Ba's last breath is a third party Shadowdark supplement for parties level 6 and higher. It's designed to allow small maps of caves or temples to be added if the GM wishes to expand, but includes 3 procedural map generators and a unique Dragon-eater Map. It also includes a unique item the GM may use to help deal with unexpectedly brutal combats. Even so, the setting is one where overstepping your skill level render unpleasant results.

It was designed as part of the 2026 Shadowdark 8-Bit Game Jam. You can find out more about my development process over on my blog. The limitations included needing to make use of 3 prompts (games), 16 pages maximum, and an optional limitation of using the dimensions of an NES game instruction manual.

For the purposes of the Jam, only the PDF are considered. However, I will include a clean version of the Dragon-eater Map if you wish to print a copy for players to see. I have the original version that was judged and a version cleaned up a little based on feedback for minor issues. I will soon be releasing an expanded version as well for a low cost that adds a lot more and refines some of the ideas that didn't get fully fleshed out due to time and space limites.

While the game does include most of these call-outs, I want to put some special thanks here as well:

First Talon Gorman, who went above and beyond creating the majority of art used in this project. You're a rockstar.

I also need to thank Ramona of Alderdoodle for providing free assets. I used a ton of them in past projects and included one here as well.

Cri of Idle Hands gets a call-out here for their useful thoughts and helpful reference checks. Similarly, Erik Frankhouse was incredibly insightful when doing multiple critique passes on last year's entry and is going to be doing a similar project to review finished versions this year. I've had a lot of growth in my formatting game thanks to these two.

Lastly I need to thank Baron de Ropp for hosting the Jam again this year as well as Kelsey Dionne who created the system. Without these two, there wouldn't be a jam at all!