It’s Spoooky Season!

Hey folks, it’s not too late to order our games for Christmas, but it’s getting close.

DriveThruCards experiences especially slow turnaround during the Holidays, so take a look at all the amazing games we have there, including some of the new ones mentioned below.

Of course, if you’re ordering gifts directly from our shop, you still have plenty of time.

New Games, New Videos

Since last we spoke, we’ve added Spree and Fish Cook to our ever-growing list of games at DriveThru. We’ve also posted new videos for Fish Cook, Hard Pass, and more.

Spree: This is our next Pearl Anniversary Game, a colorful update for a game whose rules didn’t really need to change. Take a midnight run through LeGrand Mall, looting the shops and shooting your friends, in this absurdly cheap game from 1996.

Fish Cook: One of our greatest games ever, Fish Cook was next in line for a deluxe edition when we sold the company in 2019. We don’t know what’s next for this little gem, but today you can order the boards and cards from us, or from DriveThruCards (cards and boards separately). You can also watch the shiny new How to Play Video.

Hard Pass: Check out this excellent free game about getting lost in the mountains with your famiy, alongside all the other great games at the Ready Room. All you need is a poker deck, which you probably have, but if you’d like to use the handsome Doctor Lucky poker decks like James does in the video, those are also hibernating at DriveThruCards.

Probability Lecture: The new lecture from Gen Con is James’ deep dive into Probability for Game Designers. Watch the video, then read Geoffrey Engelstein’s clever extrapolation on the horse racing example.

Unexploded Cow: We still have a few of the 2013 Deluxe Edition in our shop! Unexploded Cow is the delightful card game where mad cows from England discover unexploded bombs in France. Play it today!

Coming Soon

Give Me the Brain: The original Friedey’s fast food Zombie game, and the Best Traditional Card Game of 1997, Give Me the Brain has popped into our release schedule slightly early, to give us time to tune up our other Pearl Anniversary games. If you’re a Coconut Crab on Patreon you’ll get this game in December (assuming the proofs are good), and everyone else will be able to get it in January.

Get Out: For a while now, we’ve been teasing and testing the updated edition of Get Out, our next Pearl Anniversary game. It’s a silly board game about getting a job, finding an apartment, and moving out of your parents’ basement. Our Coconut Crabs will get this game in January, and it’ll be available for the rest of us one month later.

Littlebeard: James Ernest’s funky pirate miniatures game is in drydock, getting a complete overhaul as we speak, and an all-new free version will be posted early in the New Year. New models, new templates, new combat rules, and a whole lot more. The new Littlebeard will keep the unique sailing mechanics that make it great, plus a dozen little bits of polish that it desperately needed.

Too Many Notes, Ben Hvrt, new Pairs decks, and more! So much is on the backlog it’s getting a little crazy, but to sum it all up, we are making some of the coolest games right now. Keep watching the skies!

Meet a Friend of Cheapass Games

Friend and collaborator Robert Brown, lead singer of Abney Park, has spent over 30 years captivating audiences worldwide with high-energy, theatrical shows across the globe—from Russia and Spain to the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Australia, and the US.

Abney Park blends a diverse range of musical styles into a fusion of rock, world, folk and industrial. Their music explores the world of Robert Brown's sci-fi novel series, The Airship Pirate Chronicles, which features a blend of steampunk aesthetics and imaginative storytelling, set in a fantastical, alternate history.

Discover their music, books, and information about upcoming shows at https://abneypark.com/

And Finally,

Correction: We apologize, to those who caught it, for confusing the vernal and autumnal equinoxes in our September newsletter. We could make a flimsy excuse that it’s spring in the other hemisphere, but we are beyond such petty rationalizations, and are always quick to own our mistakes. Shout out to Beverly Weaver, James’ mom, for letting us know.

As always, thanks for supporting Cheapass Games and Crab Fragment Labs. If you like what we’re doing, please consider joining us on Patreon, where a small contribution helps keep our lights on, and a larger contribution puts you into our elite cadre of Coconut Crabs, who receive cool new stuff every few weeks, directly to their real actual mailbox.

See you at the table!