Oakland-based indie publisher PostCurious will launch The Witching Hour: A Puzzletale on Kickstarter on 29 September 2026, marking the tabletop adventure debut of BBC Radio comedy writer Rebecca Channon. The five- to eight-hour boxed puzzle mystery has been selected as a Kickstarter “Project We Love” and is part of Witchstarter, the crowdfunding platform’s annual October supernatural showcase.
The box sets its story in Old Miring, an isolated settlement where suspicion of the occult never died out. According to local lore, dangerous witches summon a cursed maze every fifty years to abduct a child. Playing solo or cooperatively, participants take on the role of an inhabitant entering the maze alone on the eve of their sixteenth birthday to confront the threat.
Gameplay pairs physical escape-room deduction with interactive fiction. Rather than relying on outside trivia or general knowledge, players inspect physical evidence across 155 story cards, 21 maze tiles, three tactile artefacts, illustrated cards, and more than two dozen documents. Solving individual puzzles reveals subsequent passages of the story, allowing players to map the labyrinth’s routes while uncovering the town’s history. Analogue hint cards provide step-by-step clues without requiring external apps.
The mechanical design stems from Rebecca Channon‘s background studying physical labyrinths across Europe. Her research examined historic locations including the Tudor hedge maze at Hampton Court Palace, the elevated bridges of Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, and the Dream of Poliphilo maze at the Château de Thoiry in France. Those structural concepts inform the box’s puzzles, which manipulate standard labyrinth rules through height, one-way paths, colour tracks, and directional limits.
Beyond maze design, the plot draws on the circular logic and social hysteria recorded in European witch trial records. Rebecca Channon, who previously wrote for BBC Radio 4’s The News Quiz and The Now Show, BBC Radio Scotland’s Breaking the News, and authored murder mystery scenarios for Freeform Games, applied those historic records to shape the town’s insular culture.
Rebecca Channon, Creator of The Witching Hour, said in a statement:
From the very start of the design process, I knew I wanted my game to involve a maze. I have always been fascinated by mazes, both on paper and in real life, and I wanted this game to be a love-letter to the form.”
PostCurious was founded by Rita Orlov, known for designing elaborate tabletop mystery titles such as The Tale of Ord and The Emerald Flame. The studio has recently expanded its catalogue through its “puzzletale” line, curating bespoke designs from external creators following the release of Lauren Bello’s The Morrison Game Factory.
Pledges for the campaign begin at $59, with an expected standard retail price of $65.
