Turkish indie studio Sealed Stories Ltd, founded by designer Can “Anima” Yaş, launched its debut high-fantasy roleplaying game, Sealed Stories, on Gamefound on 8 October 2026. The standalone tactical roleplaying game hit its initial £8,000 funding target in under 23 hours and currently sits at over £12,800 from nearly 60 backers, unlocking initial localisation milestones for physical and digital editions.
Sealed Stories attempts to solve tabletop turn paralysis by running entirely on simultaneous resolution. Instead of cycling through rigid, round-robin initiative ladders, encounters resolve across split-second, four-second rounds broken into two-second “Moments.” Players commit and reveal action cards in lockstep, testing a single d20 roll against target matrices to process attacks, evasions, blocks, and spell casting in unified, dramatic collisions.
Simultaneous momentum and the Combat Matrix
The game engine strips out passive Armour Class targets and separate damage rolls in favour of active opposition and degrees of success. Every participant generates a single Combat Result per Moment by combining a d20 roll with their Combat Mastery rating. When an attack strikes a defender, this single total compares directly against the opponent’s chosen reaction on the system’s Combat Matrix.
Opposed results produce scaled consequences:
- Attack versus Defence: Shields and parries reduce incoming momentum, bleeding away damage or staggering the attacker based on raw numerical margins.
- Attack versus Attack: Mutually aggressive declarations result in both combatants landing blows or countering one another simultaneously without isolated interruptions.
- Attack versus Movement or Interruption: If a character attempts to move, cast a spell, or drink a potion under fire, a margins check dictates whether the action finishes cleanly, succeeds with half damage, or suffers total disruption.
Defensive gear plays an active, degrading role in survival. Shields absorb heavy blows when angled correctly, whilst four distinct armour body weights absorb fixed point thresholds. Armour gradually degrades, tears, and breaks under sustained bludgeoning, slashing, or piercing strikes, forcing parties to leverage repair kits and field smithing between skirmishes.
Class identity without shared spell pools
Character development eschews generic spell pools and uniform talent trees. Across 32 base classes and more than 60 archetypes grouped into Warriors, Tricksters, Mages, and Mystics, no two classes share the same spells, prayers, or resource frameworks.
Every spellcaster manipulates a distinct magical discipline with over 70 exclusive spells per class, preventing arcane homogenisation. Furthermore, 15 core species and over 30 subspecies aren’t static attribute bundles; each species advances along milestone-based evolutionary paths tied to physical, cultural, and metaphysical transformations within Animaeris.
No generative AI has been used in the illustrations inside the Sealed Stories books. The illustrations were created by Emre Ünsal. Sealed Stories itself is not a recently generated project; the world of Animaeris has been developed, written and played for nearly twenty years.
Beyond swordplay and spellcraft, non-combat disciplines operate as deep mechanical systems rather than throwaway narrative skill checks. The game includes standalone modular engines for gathering, complex lock mechanisms, 48 distinct tactical traps, and a botanical system with 114 regional fantasy herbs used to compound medicines, poisons, and perfumes.
Three distinct solo architectures
Addressing the realities of modern tabletop scheduling, Sealed Stories builds solo, GM-free play into its core design rather than tacking on an automated oracle table as an afterthought. The game splits GM-free play across three pre-written dedicated modules:
- Third Bell’s Shadow: A story-driven narrative solo campaign prioritising investigation, social diplomacy, and persistent branching choices.
- Destiny Breaker: A sandbox, open-ended survival campaign where solo players chart unmapped hexes, settle outposts, and trigger dynamic “Sealed Fields”, anomalous reality pockets generated on the fly through dice-driven environmental tables.
- DeepGate: A tactical, replayable dungeon raid mode designed for one to four players without a game master, running multi-phase boss encounters, modular tile exploration, and escalating tactical combat.
Campaign outcomes across all three modes, as well as home group campaigns, feed directly into the overarching “Chronicle System,” an optional persistent record where community play outcomes leave permanent geopolitical marks on the evolving history of Animaeris.
Core pledge options and production timeline
Backers can enter the digital system through the £15 Digital Starter Set (providing fundamental rules, pre-generated characters, and two introductory modules) or access the full mechanical ruleset via the £49 Digital Core, which contains all four core rulebooks, 32 classes, character paths, and 40 ready-to-print 3D STL miniatures. For solo players, the £69 Digital Solo Complete packages all three standalone solo adventures alongside the complete player-facing character creation rules from the core line.
Physical collections range from the £99 Solo Archive box set to the £135 Core Set Physical, which bundles four hardcover core volumes with 15 physical miniatures, modular map tiles, and tracking tokens. Backers seeking the full mechanical and lore compendium can opt for the £209 Library Essentials Physical, packaging all seven hardcover rulebooks and expansions alongside the GM screen.
The crowdfunding campaign runs on Gamefound until 12 November 2026 under an all-or-nothing funding model. Digital reward delivery is scheduled to commence in waves between March and June 2027, with physical box sets and hardcover print editions slated for worldwide fulfilment in October 2027.
