At Stonemaier Games, we tend to keep the future a mystery until it becomes the present. We make a product we love, we announce it when it’s on the way to fulfillment centers, we sell it to you a month later, then we ship it to you within a few weeks.
In our first e-newsletter of 2022, I decided to try something new: I posted a riddle of sorts that teased everything we hoped/planned to release over the next 12 months. Despite the level of vagueness, my perception is that people enjoyed the sneak peek at what was to come, and I plan to release a similar preview in our January newsletter (subscribe here).
Here are the results of the riddle for anything that actually released in 2022:
- An old game in a new world and a new game in an old world: The first clause refers to Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest (the new edition of the 10-year-old classic, Libertalia). As the second clause, that game needed some extra time, and it will release in 2023.
- An expansion and a game that break a 10-year-old Stonemaier rule: This clue refers to a core tenet of Stonemaier Games regarding player count, as historically we only publish games that can scale up to at least 5 players. We broke this rule for Smitten (a 1-2 player game) because the game’s purpose was to celebrate our 10th anniversary; as a free game for the anniversary, it seemed like a reasonable time to break the rule. We also broke it for Wingspan Asia, which is both an expansion for 1-7 players and a standalone game for 1-2 players; it’s dual purpose served as another reasonable excuse to break the rule.
- A new way to store and organize a popular game: This was a bit of a trick teaser, as people probably thought I was talking about the already-publicly known Wingspan Nesting Box, but I was also secretly referring to the Viticulture Wine Crate!
- Special edition reprints of one or two games: One of those games was the Between Two Cities Essential Edition. As for the other…I’m not quite sure what I was referring to. Perhaps we were considering a new edition of another Stonemaier Game? I can’t recall, but currently that’s no longer the case.
- An expansion and a game in a major untapped genre (for us): Here I was talking about the cooperative genre of games, into which we delved for both Viticulture World and for Smitten.
- Two surprise product lines that we haven’t hinted at anywhere: Jigsaw puzzles and disc golf discs! We tiptoed tentatively into both of these product lines, producing a few thousand puzzles and a few hundred custom disc golf discs in partnership with Innova.
- More Rolling Realms promos connected to some amazing non-Stonemaier games: In 2022 we released realms inspired by A Feast for Odin, Honey Buzz, Ark Nova, Micro Dojo, and Architects of the West Kingdom.
You can check out our webstores (US, Europe, Canada, and Australia/Asia) if you’re intrigued by any of these products.
What do you think about riddle-style teasers like these?
Also read/watch:
- My Top 10 Favorite Spoilers in Tabletop Games
- We Don’t Talk About Spoilers (or Bruno)
- Marketing Products with Spoilers
If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.
18 Comments on “Results of the 2022 Stonemaier Teaser Preview”
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[…] everything we hoped/planned to release over the next 12 months. This went over well (including the reveal in late 2022), so I tried it again in our first newsletter of 2023. Here are the clues I […]
I’m so thrilled for your success, having been an early Stonemaier game tester. Can’t wait to see what 2023 will bring!
Really appreciate the riddles and find that it builds excitement for the year. Definitely worth pursuing in 2023. And what a year it’s been for Stonemaier Games!
The riddles of 2022 have been a really fun highlight this past year for my son and I. Whenever there was a new release we would go back to the riddles and speculate if that was the answer to one of them, or if there was more to come?? Tons of fun. We are looking forward to the 2023 riddles.
Turns out you even riddled yourself which I thought was awesome! Bet you didn’t imagine creating a puzzle for yourself in a years time :)
Even though I read the Stonemaier e-Newsletter and absolutely love Scythe and Flügelschlag, these Teaser-Previews simply did not register on my „Boardgames-Radar“.
However, I must admit that I am not a fan of teasers – so often it can feel like a cheap marketing trick – so I probably just ignored it. Sorry for the lack of enthusiasm, as you clearly put quite a lot of thought into writing these text puzzles.
I’m on the edge of my seat waiting for 2023 riddles. These were fun all year long to check back on.
You ask what we thought about the teasers: I loved them. I discussed them with friends frequently throughout the year as new titles were announced, figuring out which might fit the riddles.
I enjoyed the riddles and checked back on them from time to time over the year. “New game in an old world” – could this be a new Scythe game coming next year? Hmmm
That is what I’m hopping, too.
Scythe is awesome and I love Rozalski’s art, but I’m betting it is more likely to be an IP that Stonemaier owns outright. Plus, it’s hard to think of another game in Scythe’s world that fits Stonemaier’s design philosophy – the obvious choice would be more of a war game, which doesn’t feel like Stonemaier to me.
If I had to guess, I would bet on something new related to Charterstone. It’s got a lovely aesthetic but is inspecific enough that it could easily populate another game. Especially if this hypothetical other game wasn’t a legacy game, the two could happily coexist without stepping on each other’s toes.
Ever since I read this comment from back in February, I’ve been assuming that it’s in the world of Scythe:
https://stonemaiergames.com/4-steps-to-pitch-your-game-to-a-tabletop-publisher/#comment-50581
I’d be happy to see something new in the world of Greengully, or even Dunya. The pendulum world seemed quite cool woth interesting characters, despite that game having low sales and engagement.
But I also love to see “fresh” games that don’t rely on the IP of any previous game. For example, libertalia was fantastic! The first time you do a call back to an old game, it’s neat. But the 5th or 6th time, it’s pretty “meh”.
Hey I think I was right!
I think the teasers are a fun way to engage!
I enjoyed the teasers a lot! Some I guessed (2 player Wingspan), but most caught me by surprise! I wonder if you noticed anyone on social media guessing them? Obviously you couldn’t say at the time, but now it would be interesting to know if there was anyone who guessed correctly!
You know, even though I had the sense that people were speculating, I didn’t hear much of the speculation myself. :)
Does anyone know of anywhere people are speculating about this year’s teasers? I have some wild theories!
I’m guessing there will be a video about it from The Mill this Saturday or next Saturday. :)