Greetings Delvers! Can you believe it? The crowdfunding campaign for Ways and Means is thundering towards us faster than a cursed locomotive ripping a grizzly hole through space and time. It’ll be launching on 5th of August (a little later than intended, but good things come to those who wait).

To celebrate the impending chaos, and shamelessly drive up that sweet, sweet engagement which powers the crumbling behemoth we call the modern internet, we’re here to present a series of short developer blogs about the making of the first hardback sourcebook for Heart: The City Beneath.

Each blog focuses on a specific piece of the Ways and Means puzzle. From new classes or callings, to equipment or hirelings, you’ll find all the juicy deets right here in good auld blog format – the way our internet ancestors intended.

Now let’s begin by taking a look at the development of the brand new cover illustration.

Since Ways and Means is the first hardback sourcebook for Heart, we knew going in that we wanted to pay homage to the original Heart corebook cover, illustrated by Felix Miall, which features a small group of Delvers beginning their descent into the red wet heaven of the Heart.

We reached out to Sar Cousins to work on the new cover after their incredible work on Dagger in the Heart – last year’s truly insane Heart campaign module. Sar immediately set to work picking out the key aspects of the cover (isolated delvers, oppressive ruins, and giant creepy hands) and sketching out a bunch of thumbnail ideas to try and find a composition which worked.

We quickly landed on the idea of continuing the downward spiral deeper into the Heart, tossed in some Relativity vibes by M. C. Escher, Sar found something which we fell in love with.

We played around with some different iterations (including one with some gribbly Pitchkins stalking the Delvers which was very fun, but way too busy for the vibes we wanted) before landing on the final version which you’ll find on the cover of Ways and Means.

There we have it! The gory cover illustration for Ways and Means. In the next developer blog, we’ll be taking a gander at the first of the new Classes you can find in the book. Follow the project to get that directly to your inbox!