Locking Out the Apocalypse
A downloadable solo TTRPG
The Great Evil attacked your world without mercy. The subsequent war against the forces of darkness dragged on for years...until finally, a group of heroes banded together and fought back. In time, they were able to drive the enemy back across the abyss, all the way to their place of origin. Everyone was counting on these brave heroes to save the day by defeating The Great Evil at its source and eliminating the threat to their world forever.
Tragically, the group was ill-prepared for the horrors that lay across the abyss. One by one, the heroes perished in battle, their last memories filled with anguish, pain, and despair.
Before their own seemingly inevitable demise, the next-to-last hero standing mustered up all their strength...and pushed you back into the abyss.
about this game
Locking Out the Apocalypse (LOA) by Meridian Inkwell is a melancholy, vaguely fantasy-themed solo TTRPG about being the last hero left alive who must complete complicated magic rituals daily in order to keep The Great Evil from destroying their world. LOA was made for the May 2025 edition of the Eternal TTRPG Jam, with the "Void, Empty Space" theme and additional "Ritual Play" challenge.
A community copy will be added for each purchase.
itchfunding
Sort of like stretch goals except they last forever (!?) These are for things I wanted to make, but considered outside the scope of a 1-month game jam. Still, I'd love to add them to the game if there's enough interest!
$50 - I will design a character sheetGoal met! Sheet loading…- $100 - I will add extra tables for random happenings/complications
- current progress: $55.50/100
acknowledgments
• The husbirb for drawing all the locks you see
• Kyward for all the pep talks and support
• Rowan Sender for hosting the Eternal TTRPG Jam monthly and supporting everyone
• Fari RPGs for their Affinity Publisher tutorials and templates that I learned so much from
• Peter Gargiulo of Unsplash for the texture used on the cover and pages
• maGmel for the page borders
• Speak the Sky for designing the Dicier typeface
Purchase
In order to download this solo TTRPG you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $3.50 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Exclusive content
Support this solo TTRPG at or above a special price point to receive something exclusive.
Community copies
Free community copies are available for anyone who can't afford to buy the game. I'd appreciate a review or comment!
Every $3.50 in purchases/tips contributes another copy to the pool, which will be periodically updated.
Download demo
Development log
- v1.2 + printer-friendly and audiobook options2 days ago
- v1.13 days ago
- Locking Out the Apocalypse out now! Lock some locks to keep the end of the world...3 days ago
Comments
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Rules question that just came up--can you go above 20 memory? I just had a very good "rest of the day" phase and gained 11... 0_0
Yes you can! But luck often swings back the other way, haha.
Just had a playthrough (my fourth or fifth?) where I got to 20 power in 9 days!!! Lots of incredible strings of luck, had 2 days where I locked 5 in a row and only had to pay 1 memory for the 6th. I did end up getting and using 1 of my items, but didn't end up mattering in the end anyway, just amounted to a +1 memory buffer. My Amulet of Focus is kind of OP when used with Stare, since you can always use it to negate a double and guarantee 2 power. But you have to be in a place to not need memory instead, so it just happened to line up that playthrough that I managed to Stare 8/9 days, 7 of which succeeded.
Sadly, in the end I realized that I had merged with the great power and had to destroy us both... RIP, at least I died a hero.
Wow, this game is lightning fast once you memorize the locks and actions you can take. I just blew through a playthrough (no journaling or RP :P) in like, 5 minutes. Alternated between a really bad day, a really good day, a really bad day, and a decent day where I couldn't quite pull it out in the end. I did get one of my magic items in my second playthrough, a Magical Hexpick 3, which I put to use to get pesky lock 5 out of the way early on :P
Still feeling out which locks to get out of the way first, which to hold onto as better shots of passing... I'm gonna do another playthrough like, right away. I imagine you could easily play this game from memory (maybe with the exception of my item system) with just the dice and a piece of paper, anywhere in the world... and that's super cool.
Yeah if you don’t play it as a journaling game, it goes pretty quickly. The husbirb got through a playthrough that was a week-ish long in a little less than half an hour, and that was with me explaining stuff a lot at the beginning. By day 3 he had all the locks memorized and was zooming along, haha.
Play the game from “memory”? 😉
hahahaha 3x fish @merink :D :D
Objects of Power subsystem (google drive link to PDF) :)
Objects of Power Print Friendly
These items will definitely prolong a playthrough, but they're not easily come by. Averaging 2 action energy per day, you still can only come across these by rolling the first three action types. (for ease, they're the only ones that roll a single d6 and, nicely, the other two are the ones that potentially gain you power. It felt serendipitous to do it that way and create additional decision points--go for Power or OBJECTS of Power? hmmmmm).
tl;dr when rolling contemplate past, introspect on who you are, or create something, if you roll a 6, you also get to roll 2d6 for one of these items. The more powerful ones are towards the flatter ends of the bell curve at 2 and 12 for example.
This is so fun!! Maybe I'll use this for my own playthrough soon. Thank you so much for taking the time! I love that the game inspired something new.
A first draft of a tracking resource for the google sheets goblins...
Love this so much, thank you for sharing it!!
*facepalm* just reread that you can lock locks in any order. That's much much more forgiving than I realized. I was like dang, this game is hard, over here calculating how many days on average you'd last, figured I'd make the google sheet account for 7 days or cycles and you'd be lucky to fill them...
ah well, need a new week, just duplicate the sheet for "week 2" :P
Oh yeah! So you basically roll and see which lock best matches what you rolled, then you push your luck or spend Memory if nothing matches. It's still pretty tough, though. Nobody in my life who's played it has lasted longer than a week. :'D
This game is for stats nerds isn't it :P I'll echo what the other commenter said about the feel, layout, and art though, very nice.
For fun I calculated the odds of successfully pushing in all states where pushing is even possible. There are hundreds of permutations of those states, but only 16 actual states where pushing would be eligible. Lock the Fourth has the most possible rolling states depending on what the current sum is and what the highest die is at 12 possible states.
Much harder to calculate out the odds of a success for any given lock but at least the pushing was somewhat easy to puzzle out.
Fun fact, there is only one state in the game that has at best a 5/6 chance of a successful push. Three states that have a 4/6 of a successful push, five that have a 3/6 chance, four that have a 2/6 chance, and two that have only a 1/6 chance.
The odds of successfully pushing are better at the earlier locks, but then again there's way more runway ahead of you that could go worse and worse, so do you risk doubling right at the start??? And paradoxically, pushing at lock 1 can only save or cost you 1 memory, so it's not that impactful even though it might be one of the better odds... I like the decision points throughout :)
If you're considering alternate stretch goals too, it'd be neat to see a print-friendly version for download as well.
<3 keep up the good work, I'm going to tinker with a minor artifact subsystem I'll let you know if it's any good ;)
Oh, you caught me! This is what happens when a math teacher writes a game, ahaha. I love this whole write-up! I did take a lot of that into consideration when calculating probabilities and such while internally playtesting and refining the rules. 😉
I’m happy to work on a print-friendly version! Do you think it’s worth doing both layouts that way or just the single pages?
👀 Very interested in the minor artifact subsystem…!
Cool layout and art, Meridian Inkwell team. Congrats for the release!
Thank you so much!! 😊