It's time again to make your own tabletop adventure game dungeon filled with OSR-style puzzles and challenges. 

We're talking dungeons that teach mechanics and eventually reveal how every strange piece fits together. Players succeed not by rolling dice, but by reasoning about their surroundings and seeing how one chamber’s mystery connects to another’s.

During the jam, I will give public feedback on early submissions. The feedback will be professional criticism you might receive from any peer. The goal is not to bash entries, it's to help everyone produce the best adventures they can.  Adventures can be updated at any time before or after the jam ends

Here are the feedback videos from last year's jam.

Format: Submissions must be less than 4500 words. They must be formatted as a PDF or Markdown or a webpage. Including images is okay.

System: You may use whatever ruleset you'd like or make your module system agnostic.

Price: Ensure your submission is set as "Free to download" or "Pay what you want" on your itch.io page. Once the jam has ended, you may change the cost of your adventure to whatever you'd like.

No AI content of any kind is allowed.

You can use this theme as inspiration for your puzzle dungeon or ignore it completely. The jam theme of this year's jam is... 

This stuff is all optional. Use whatever inspires you and helps you create.

Community

• Zine Month discord server - We'll be using the same guest channel as last year in the Zine Month discord (puzzle-dungeon-jam). The reason for this is to encourage folks to ask for help in an already established, creator-focused server (which is active all year round). This is a great place to connect with contributors and ask all your zine and adventure creating questions. I'll also be there for advice if you need me.

Retrospective

•  A look back at Puzzle Dungeon Jam (2025) 

Theory

• Overview of OSR-style puzzles
• Puzzle Dungeon Design part 1: Themes & Gimmicks
• Puzzle Dungeon Design part 2: Challenges and Lessons
• How to run a puzzle dungeon
• The Legend of Zelda puzzle box dungeon
• Design Your Locks With More Keys

Procedure

• Designing Dungeons: Or How To Kill A Party In 30 Rooms or Less
• Bite-sized dungeon design
• Cairn's dungeon seeds
• Cyclic Dungeon Generation

Examples

• A Familiar Tower - Escape room wizard tower that's not quite abandoned. Also available for free as an interactive webpage.
• Puzzle Dungeon: The Seers Sanctum - They're eyeing to meet you! Also available for free as an interactive webpage.
• Aberrant Reflections - Mirror mirror on the wall, what is that staring back at me?
• Fabien's Atelier - Floating wizard island with a problem.
• The Door Locks Behind You - Rules and procedures for puzzle adventures with that Zelda flavor.
• Submissions from Puzzle Dungeon Jam 2025

Assets

• Just The Games - Make your own interactive adventure
• Classic Explorer Starter Template - Simple and effective PDF layout template.
• Gordy's Public Domain Fantasy Art Pack 3 - This is where the jam itch page assets are from!
• More of Gordy's work (also CC0) available on their itch page
• New School Revolution Public Domain Art curated selection
• Yochai Gal's collection of itch art and templates