Beyond Cataclysm and Ada Press have launched a crowdfunding campaign for The Girl With The Most Delicious Heart, an original solo journaling roleplaying game by Christopher John Eggett. A compact A6 zine designed for portable play, the title reached full funding within hours of launch and is now cruising past its initial £500 target.
The project casts the player as a hunted figure whose literal heart is an irresistible prize for predatory horrors. Gameplay divides each in-game year into distinct phases of evasion and quiet domesticity: years when monsters strike demand difficult sacrifices to stay alive, while quieter years offer space to forge community bonds, discover artefacts, and reinforce physical defences.
Mechanics
Play functions as an accessible, low-maths engine requiring only a notebook, a writing implement, and a single six-sided die. Characters track four foundational stats: Legend (a measure of notoriety), Friends, Protections, and Artefacts.
Each annual cycle begins with a roll against the character’s Legend score, modified by elapsed time and overall strength, to determine whether a beast arrives at the door. If a predator appears, its threat tier is determined using a scale table. Players roll to overcome the threat; failure forces an immediate operational choice between fleeing into the unknown or standing ground. Choosing combat demands the permanent sacrifice of established allies, defences, or relics to survive. During peaceful respite years, rolls against current resource values determine whether attempts to recruit allies, secure physical fortifications, or uncover legendary items succeed.
Physical format and production standards
The physical release is a 20- to 40-page, staple-bound A6 zine sized to fit in an everyday coat pocket or go-bag. Physical production specifications target a durable 300gsm paper cover enclosing 90 to 120 gsm uncoated recycled paper pages for optimal pencil and ink note-taking.
Illustrator Mary McGroary leads the visual design alongside layout designer Mike Carr, using traditional pencil, brush, and ink sketches scanned for print layout under a “fairytale-Guernica” visual direction.
Author Matt Thrower (of There Will Be Games) highlighted the thematic core of the system:
A fantastic framework for constructing fables of dark fantasy, full of pathos, adventure and feminist metaphor. You can be Buffy, or Beverley Marsh, or go anywhere your delicious heart decides to take you.
Creator catalogues and reward tiers
Rather than relying purely on standalone book options, the campaign bundles the core game alongside the wider back-catalogues of both Ada Press and Beyond Cataclysm. These collections group together whimsical oddities and dark speculative projects, letting backers acquire the complete library of both imprints across physical and digital formats.
- Pledge £8: Digital Heart. A DRM-free digital PDF edition of The Girl With The Most Delicious Heart.
- Pledge £12: Physical Heart. A physical staple-bound A6 zine copy of The Girl With The Most Delicious Heart, accompanied by the digital PDF edition.
- Pledge £24: Monsters and How To Make Them (Digital). Digital PDF copies of three Ada Press titles: The Girl With The Most Delicious Heart, The Frankenstein Society Meeting Handbook, and The Taming Of The Slugiraffe.
- Pledge £24: Coffee Stains, Stories and Scrubs (Digital). Four digital Beyond Cataclysm releases: The Girl With The Most Delicious Heart, ISBN Coffee, The Die Decides, and A Set Of Scrubs.
- Pledge £34: Monsters and How To Make Them (Physical). Physical print editions of all three Ada Press releases (The Girl With The Most Delicious Heart, The Frankenstein Society Meeting Handbook, and The Taming Of The Slugiraffe), including digital PDF copies.
- Pledge £34: Coffee Stains, Stories & Scrubs (Physical). Physical print editions of four Beyond Cataclysm releases (The Girl With The Most Delicious Heart, ISBN Coffee, The Die Decides, and A Set Of Scrubs), including digital PDF copies.
- Pledge £40: Monsters & Healing Mega Bundle (Digital). Complete digital library consisting of six PDF releases across both Ada Press and Beyond Cataclysm.
- Pledge £60: Monsters & Healing Mega Bundle (Physical). Complete physical library containing all six print releases from Ada Press and Beyond Cataclysm, alongside complete digital PDF editions.
The campaign runs under Kickstarter’s standard all-or-nothing funding model and ends at 3:08 PM UTC on Thursday, 3 December 2026. Digital rewards are scheduled for delivery in February 2027, with physical fulfilment following in May 2027.
