First look at The Catacombs of Dread: May Warlock debuts tactical tower horror at Tabletop Scotland

Independent game designer May Warlock (the pen name of Nye Macaulay) has unveiled The Catacombs of Dread at Tabletop Scotland 2026, marking the very first convention playtests of the tense, tower-based dungeon crawl. Speaking to Geek Native at the Royal Highland Centre, Macaulay revealed that the project incubated directly out of the workshop space at Ancient Robot Games, the Edinburgh tabletop venue and show sponsor based on Leith Walk. Running through Sunday 6 September, the convention provides attendees with an exclusive opportunity to test the multiplayer horror system before the designer decides whether to proceed to a formal commercial release.

The core game adapts the mechanical tension of physical block-pulling towers, popularised in tabletop horror by Dread, to drive an expedition through a sealed, labyrinthine fortress. In The Catacombs of Dread, an adventuring party ventures into an ancient ruin to recover an ally who stormed off alone following a bitter dispute. The design stems directly from Macaulay’s unpublished short story The Hallway, which explored an individual’s desperate attempt to escape an architectural trap. A full publication of the original short story remains tied to whether this public playtest run succeeds.

Macaulay previously gained acclaim in the indie design space for epilogue, a solo, print-and-play writing game centred on a ghost tasked with conducting their own funeral rites. The Catacombs of Dread expands those reflective, macabre themes into a collaborative group dynamic. Setup rules mandate that three wooden blocks be pulled per player below five before exploration begins, instantly placing physical pressure on the central structure.

Rather than relying purely on binary survival checks, the rules sheet spotted at Tabletop Scotland introduces granular tactical risk:

Two-Stage Failure: A tumbling tower does not mean an immediate exit. If the tower collapses on a player’s first failure before the core horror becomes apparent, the character suffers lasting psychological trauma rather than instant death.
Elective Pulls: Players may voluntarily pull blocks without a prompt from the Host to exert extra effort. These elective risks allow characters to hold heavy stone doors, gain a positional drop on lurking threats, improve attack lethality, or secure critical clues their character would otherwise miss.
Complex Multi-Pulls: Difficult environmental tasks demand multiple pulls, with the player deciding which mechanical step corresponds to each block removed. Abandoning a pull mid-effort results in automatic failure, and any collapse triggered while walking away still removes the explorer from play.

With playtests continuing across the weekend at the Royal Highland Centre, the future of the game rests squarely on player feedback gathered on the show floor.

Note that The Catacombs of Dread is a working title and may change.