In 2023, Beadle & Grimm’s unleashed Ring of Chaos upon the world. The competitive fantasy battle royale, the Pandemonium Warehouse’s first foray into board games, raised nearly $500,000 on Kickstarter and was well-received thanks to the ease of play and, well, chaos of the game. So now, in 2025, they’ve unearthed Rising Fear, a standalone expansion that can be played alongside the base game or as its own ooky-spooky title. With a ton of horror pedigree at Beadle & Grimm’s (not sure if you’ve seen some of the movies one of the owners has been in, but they’re scary) I was incredibly curious about how this new title came about. Luckily Bill Rehor, who lead the project, was happy to oblige.
While it may seem obvious considering the love you all have for the genre, why a horror/spooky edition of Ring of Chaos for its first big follow up?
Horror seemed like a great, fantasy-adjacent place to land for an edition we envisioned as fully compatible with the original set. We definitely considered doing something more radical – could you have aliens with ray guns, perhaps? – but mixing those elements with the first RoC might feel a bit odd. With the monstrosities in Rising Fear, you can still picture them locked in combat with the fantasy heroes from the original game, but their look is distinctly their own – and a lot of fun to imagine and create.
Why make it stand-alone as opposed to just an expansion?
This was a big debate, as we originally conceived of Rising Fear as an expansion. Ultimately, though, we realized that this new edition replaces about 80% of the game experience with new Parties, new maps and new art. Including the Action Deck to make it a standalone game allows new players who are excited about the horror genre to jump right in and play.
As big board game players ourselves, we also wanted to avoid a situation where you’re having to take two games off your shelf and mix-and-match the elements in order to play it. If you just want to play Rising Fear, it’s got all you need. If you want to mix elements of the previous game with the new game, pick the “Total Chaos” set with everything all bundled together!
Is this generally what we can expect from further Ring of Chaos expansion?
That’s a great question I can’t answer yet. We need to make sure we’re giving our audience what they want, so we’re really looking forward to getting this game into people’s hands and hearing their response. Whatever our fans ask for, that’s what the next expansion will look like!
Did the new setting open up any interesting design opportunities not present in the base game?
I’d never thought about special terrain spaces before, but as soon as I saw Jack’s first pass at a Graveyard map, I thought to myself: “Something bad has to happen when you walk around in a place like this…” So Rising Fear contains two new terrain types – Cursed Ground and Unhallowed Ground – that add a great new twist to the game.
How did you go about designing the new parties to make them stand out from what we already had?
Our goal was to find an artist we loved who could create a very different look to what’s present in the original game. We didn’t have the luxury of using a single artist on the first edition, but with Rising Fear the amazing Lauren Addy did all the characters, as well as the box cover, and we’re super excited by the result. The art she created has an old-school painterly style that we adore, and it’s very distinct from the style of the original game. Having one artist gives Rising Fear a cohesive style that’s all its own.
Tell me a bit about Undead Onslaught, the new 2 player head to head game mode. Where’d that start?
That’s an example of what we love about attending game conventions – it’s a great place to hear back from our customers. The first time we had the original game for sale at a convention, I had a young couple ask me if it had a two-player option – they play most of their games as a couple – and it bummed me out to have to tell them no. We’d tried the original RoC with 2 players, but it felt a little empty, so we set it at 3-6 players to make sure gamers were getting the experience we intended. But it nagged at me, so when we began this project I started playing around with new additional rules that would give someone the true, chaotic “rugby match” vibe of a full game of RoC, but with only two players. 6 ghouls later, I think we got there!
Are there any fun mix and match options you’ve discovered between the two editions?
Rising Fear is completely compatible with the original set – you can play the new Parties on an old map, pit new parties against old ones, or even alter the old maps to feel new again! We made a last-minute decision to include Cursed Ground and Unhallowed Ground tokens in the new game, so that you can place them on your original edition maps. We’re really happy with how that turned out – adding a few spaces of dangerous terrain to Tentacle Island makes it feel like a whole new map.
With the Parties, having a special power like the Eye Harvesters – they can sacrifice their Summoning Points to play almost any card they want – forces everyone else to play just a little bit differently, even if you’re running an original edition Party. They’re balanced, but they force you to consider new strategies, which was the whole point for us. Overall, mixing the two editions together is really a blast.
Favorite new addition to Ring of Chaos?
The Haunted House map is wonderfully nasty. RoC is proud to be of the “Take that!” genre of board games, and the Cursed Ground spaces on that map are a delightfully satisfying way to stick your opponent into a whole new world of trouble. I personally also love the “Vengeful Spirits” alternate rule that keeps a dangerous vestige of eliminated players on the board, making the end game a particularly spooky challenge!
You can still get in a late pledge for Ring of Chaos: Rising Fear now, and keep an eye out for the full release in 2026!
Images via Beadle & Grimm’s
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