SMOOSH JUICE
Alley Cat and Dr. Finn Change Course, and Corey Konieczka Listens to the Voices in His Head | BoardGameGeek News
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▪️ In July 2019, Asmodee announced the founding of Unexpected Games, describing it as “a new board game studio centered around innovative design and spearheaded by renowned game designer Corey Konieczka“.
Unexpected Games launched in mid-2021 with Konieczka’s The Initiative, followed that in 2022 with Voices In My Head and 3000 Scoundrels, and came out The Mandalorian: Adventures (a co-design between Konieczka and Josh Beppler) in 2024, with The Mandalorian: Adventures – Clan of Two Expansion coming in Q2 2025.
On March 28, 2025 Unexpected Games announced that Konieczka was retiring as head of the studio, while noting that “a new game system designed by Corey” will debut in 2026, with Konieczka saying in a farewell note that “I think it’s one of the most fun (and unique) games I’ve ever created”. Here’s more from his farewell note:
Unexpected Games started a farewell thread on BGG should you care to comment on Konieczka’s work.
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▪️ Designer Steve Finn has decided to cease publishing physical games through his Dr. Finn’s Games brand. Writes Finn, “Instead, Dr. Finn’s Games will begin to design game books, which will essentially be like print and play games, but in a book form. Using Amazon’s KDP service, which is a print on demand service, Dr. Finn’s Games can create fun and quick games without needing to manufacture games that require storage. The first Kickstarter campaign to help fund this effort will be launching in April 2025 and will be for Dr. Finn’s Solo Strategy and Word Games book.”
As such, Finn is clearing out all stock on the Dr. Finn’s Games website. He still plans to create tabletop games, but will pitch them to other companies instead of publishing them himself.
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▪️ In similar-ish news, after crowdfunding its 2025 release Baghdad: The City of Peace, a design by Fabio Lopiano and Nestore Mangone, publisher Alley Cat Games has retroactively transformed the retail edition of the game into a Kickstarter exclusive:
This, coupled with rising costs and the uncertainty surrounding U.S. tariffs, has led us to look at ways of streamlining the business to ensure that we don’t have so much money tied up in stock. We’d much rather invest this money in making more great games!
As a result we have decided that, for the foreseeable future, we will no longer be producing Retail Editions of our Kickstarter projects — and therefore our Kickstarter funded games will no longer be available in general distribution.
We will still sell Kickstarter editions of the games directly on our Website and at Conventions at a higher price (as we have always done), and brick and mortar retailers will still be able to back our Kickstarter campaigns for Deluxe Editions. We will not, however, create a Retail Edition of the games, and they will not be available to distributors after release. This means that the quantity of games produced will be much lower, and they won’t be widely available outside of Kickstarter.
We understand that these changes will be disappointing for some backers, and those that were hoping to pick up Baghdad at retail level later on, and we apologise for this. We feel that these steps are needed to put us in an even better stead to tackle any challenges that the industry will soon be facing.
In my post-GAMA Expo 2025 comments on how publishers would respond to U.S. tariffs, I mentioned that some publishers planned to crowdfund more releases to mitigate risk, and this change seems like a move along these lines.
Of course, another factor might be that in that crowdfunding project, 645 people backed the Deluxe Edition of Baghdad, 689 people backed the Collector’s Edition (which includes card sleeves, acrylic bits, and metal coins, and 8(!) backed the Retail Edition. I can imagine the folks at Alley Cat looking at that latter number and wondering, “Why should we bother?”
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▪️ Designer Ryan Iler of Wonderment Games debuted in late 2016 with a crowdfunding campaign for Quodd Heroes, which hit the market in 2019 to a decent response.
He then crowdfunded Quodd Heroes (2nd Edition) in September 2022…and that hasn’t gone as well, with a March 2025 update noting that “we’re facing a significant shortfall of up to $150,000 USD needed to complete production of Quodd Heroes as specified in the Kickstarter campaign”. (Iler also included this note that was news to those who backed that second crowdfunding campaign: “I entered this second edition project already burdened by a significant debt from the first edition, which strained the project from the start.”)
I’m not here to jump on Iler as I don’t know his and his family’s personal circumstances; only to state that I can imagine many publishers running into difficulty throughout 2025 given the surprise U.S. tariffs — which continue to surprise almost everyone given their fluid nature and erratic source — that will likely add tens of thousands of dollars in unexpected costs to crowdfunded projects completed in 2024 and earlier.
Almost no one sets up crowdfunding projects to scam others, and pretty much everyone I’ve ever spoken with about their project is sincere in their desire to bring their creation (or someone else’s) into this world — but many seem unaware that what they’re doing is starting a business, and they lack skills or knowledge along those lines, so they make choices that impede their chance of success or actively increase their chance of failure. (I failed with BoardgameNews.com for this reason.) Please understand that things happen, and be kind in your comments.
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▪️ Speaking of erratic, in peripherally game-related news, Rep. Stan Gerdes has filed a bill in the Texas House of Representatives dubbed the F.U.R.R.I.E.S Act — that is, the Forbidding Unlawful Representation of Roleplaying in Education Act — that would amend the state’s Education Code to require that a school’s code of conduct would “prohibit any non-human behavior by a student”. More specifically:
• engage in any non-human behaviors as defined by Chapter 37.001 (6) Education Code; or
• present himself or herself, on days other than exempt days, as anything other than a human being.
Exempt days include a five-day period corresponding with Halloween, school spirit days in which students are encouraged to wear costumes, and “a day that the student must rehearse, perform, or attend an event that would otherwise require the student to dress in costume if the student is a school mascot or is involved in district funded or sponsored theatre organization”. Oh, and what is Chapter 37.001 (6) of the Education Code? Here’s what is proposed:
(A) using a litter box for the passing of stool, urine, or other human byproducts;
(B) a personal or outward display, except during a school play or by a school mascot, through surgical or superficial means of features that are non-human such as:
—–(i) tails;
—–(ii) leashes, collars, other accessories designed for pets;
—–(iii) fur, other than naturally occurring human hair or a wig made to look like human hair;
—–(iv) artificial, animal-like ears; or
—–(v) other physiological features that have not historically been assigned to the homo sapiens species through a means of natural biological development;
(C) barking, meowing, hissing, or other animal noises that are not human speech; and
(D) licking oneself or others for the purpose of grooming or maintenance.
The “furries in litter boxes” thing was debunked in 2022, so why is anyone still wasting time with this nonsense? Also, barking, meowing, hissing, and other animal noises are integral parts of human speech. What a ding-dong…