Still Waiting for Puppet Master: Return to Bodega Bay Inn 

When it comes to crowd funded project, I'm big advocate for rolling the dice on bold ideas. I've backed many a Kickstart project, and many of them have delivered above and beyond. It was through a kickstart that I got my dream of owning my very own 1:1 replica of chucky, of owning a Big Trouble in Little China board game. Silly things, but HUGE things for fans that love that type of stuff. So, as huge fan of Charles Band and his Full Moon Features film company, I felt obligated to dipp my toes into a project backed by Band himself. Full Moon has delivered me so many great films and franchise over the years, one of which is the Puppet Master series. So when I spotted Puppet Master: Return to Bodega Bay Inn, a board game based on the franchise, I was ALL IN!

Launched on the GameFound website, Return to Bodega Bay had a built-in advantage: a cult horror licence, a ready-made fanbase and the promise of stalking the Bodega Bay Inn with a table full of killer puppets (Wahoo). On paper, Dynamite Entertainment had pretty much cracked it. All they needed to do was print the game and ship it. But... as of today (25 June 2026), what the company have delivered is a whole load of radio silence and lot of fan regret.

The campaign showed off a co-operative survival game built around modular rooms, a puppet behaviour system with a classic horror atmosphere. It sounded like the sort of project that could have slithered straight into the hearts of us horror fans, and delivered on a fun game with Puppet Master minis (oh be stiil my beating heart). But unfortunately for everyone that backed the project, things are not looking good. The campaign raised a staggering $34,980.34 raised by 321 backers, which meant opening up stretch goals and putting the project firmly into production. 

But the campaign has not exactly had a smooth ride and opening the doors to Bodega Bay seems to be as tricker than expected. From the early days, backers were raising concerns about the value on offer, with many pointing to the pricing, the shipping costs (OMG the SHIPPING COSTS), and the choice to make the human characters into bog-standard "we have not really tried" wooden meeples rather than miniatures. The art direction also took plenty of heat (probably from Torch), with backers saying the board and cards felt too bright, too plain and WAY too generic for something tied to Puppet Master. The expansion also drew criticism, with some fans feeling the content should have been folded into the core game rather than sold separately. Considering that you could not buy the expansion by itself, it felt like something cut form the original game in order to make more money. 

To their credit, Dynamite did respond to some of that feedback during the campaign. The tiles were revised to make the game look darker and more atmospheric, which many backers asked for, and later updates showed further cosmetic changes. Stretch goals were also introduced, including extra cards and other gameplay tweaks, but the excitement around those additions never really erased the growing frustration around communication and pricing.

Fans took to the GameFound commenst section to air their grievances.

One backer summed up the mood neatly:

“We are officially in June, which is the end of our original estimated delivery window, yet the campaign has gone completely silent since April.”

Another pointed out the contradiction between the update and the silence:

“In Update #9, it was stated that a 4-week Kickstarter would launch… Neither of those things has happened.”

And one of the harsher comments captured the mood bluntly:

“You might as well lose faith. You’ve already lost your money.”

Yes, backers are feeling more than a little annoyed at the silence, the missed deadlines, and the lack of any meaningful progress since the last update.

Look, we are all human, and bad things happen. Poor choices, dwindling funds and biting off more than you can chew. I reported, a few years back now, on one of the biggest Horror Conventions that sadly collapsed under a weight or poor decisions and crazy funding tactics. I missed out on meeting Sid Haig (and having a full costume photograph) and he sadly passed away the following year. It's a situation that still stings becuas eof the WAY in which the whole thing was handled. All this needs is a little diplomacy and a some actual progress on the game, and us us fans, silly as we may be, will be happy as larry!

But right now, it does look like a fair few horror fans are going to end up out of pocket for something that was poorly planned and, quite possibly, too much for Dynamite Entertainment to handle.

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