Happy April, Denizens of Crab Cay!

The world swirls around us, while we sit quietly on the beach, spinning out new ideas and waiting for the seas to rise.

The game industry has been panicking of late, struggling with the costs of international trade. Crab Fragment Labs is lucky not to be impacted by any of that, but our hearts still go out to the publishers caught in this trap.

Just a reminder that our free games are still free, and you can still print them at home.

Reintroducing Shipwrights of Marino

Many fans of Crab Fragment have remarked that Shipwrights of Marino is their favorite Crab Fragment Game. We’re so glad to have finally added this game to the Shop, and posted a new How to Play Video. You can buy the board and cards from DriveThruCards, or you can print them yourself from the files online.

Shipwrights of Marino is a simple marketplace game about building airships. Each player manages a shipyard in the Golden City, and your goal is to make the most profit. It’s elegant and crafty, and we hope you’ll enjoy the poetic joy of building your own game about building things.

You can probably tell, but James Ernest actually shot this video more than a year ago. But then, Shipwrights spent a while in limbo, as we negotiated a sale to a real publisher (and a theme change you don’t want to hear about). As they often do, that deal fell apart, and we’re now thrilled to share this game with you again in its original form, unencumbered by the spectre of a publishing deal.

New Videos

We’ve posted several new How to Play videos since the last newsletter. Here are links:

Paradise Road: A simple dice-driven racing game.

The Harvest: A strategic card game for 2 players, set in Fight City

Cowards: A two-player bluffing game for the Blossom Deck

Shipwrights of Marino: An excellent ship--building game for 2-5 players.

Secret Projects in the Works

The recent upheavals in the world at large have repercussions too complex to predict. Here are some things we know right now:

Secret Games: Some of our game products that were looking for a good home may come back to Crab Fragment Labs and receive more attention from us. For most of these, it’s just too soon to tell. Some of these games are known to you, and others are completely secret.

Greater Than Games: Last week, Flat River Group issued a press release saying that they were discontinuing all Greater than Games products (which includes Cheapass Games). At the same time they laid off every member of that group that they were not contractually obligated to keep. What does this mean for Cheapass Games? We honestly have no idea. But there’s a chance the whole kaboodle will be returning to us, which would represent a huge new catalog of games to manage and update.

We Also Do Steaks: James Ernest is in final editing on a collection of joke radio ads from Here All Week, his pandemic-era podcast (with Kelly Wright), entitled “We Also Do Steaks.” It will take some time to post that book at our favorite print-on-demand publisher, but we’ll soon be able to post excerpts online!

Thanks For Your Support!

Crab Fragment Labs is lucky to have such a great following, but we’re struggling to make that audience grow. When you can, please help us do that. Tell your friends about us. Forward this newsletter, share our videos, and play our games with everyone.

Games are all about sharing great experiences. They aren’t about retail pricing or trade wars or dodging tariffs. (Except for the ones that are.) There may never have been a better time for a grassroots sharing model like ours to take off, and we are excited to be a small part of it.

Thanks as always for supporting Crab Fragment Games, and we’ll see you at the table!