Snake People: A Game of Anticipatory Grief

What happens on the day after the apocalypse? When all your plans go up in smoke, what do you want for your future? How do you make sense of your past?

In Snake People, players craft a story of mortality and hope. Choose your species, choose your apocalypse. Create and dream a world together. Imagine your legacy and what comes for the generations that follow.

The game evolves through 6 scenes, building from the past to the future. Players trade off the role of Speaker, beginning the scene by answering its Setting Question. Once they've established this new element of the world, each player responds to the scene's Storytelling Prompt. After the final scene, players may choose to construct an epilogue.

Keep the scene prompts in front of you with the 6 illustrated cards included in the zine. Cut them out for use at the table. Product also includes PDF optimized for online play, printable PDF to make your own zine, and a .zip of scene prompt PNGs for online play. Note: digital copy is fulfilled through Itch.io (does not require Itch.io account).

Snake People was funded on Kickstarter as part of Zine Quest 2. It is a 12-page, 5.5” x 8.5” stapled zine with card stock cover. Designed, written, and published by Ruth Tillman. Original cover art by Jey Pawlik. Interior art by Edgardo Granel-Ruiz and Evlyn Moreau. Edited by Colleen Riley.