PNP Arcade

PNP Friday for August 28, 2026 - What I Love About Gem Getter Pro. Plus PNP news.

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 11:29:17 GMT

Welcome to Print & Play Friday! It’s August 28th and we’ve got a fresh batch of print and play news and games for your reading (and playing) pleasure.

Main Feature: What I Love About Gem Getter Pro
New Games This Week
Community Spotlight: How to Make Print-and-Play Standees
Crowdfunding News (PNP Previews & Campaigns)
Where Are They Now?

What I Love About Gem Getter Pro

JASON GREENO // AUGUST 28, 2026

FINALLY…I got to play Gem Getter! This game has been orbiting my stratosphere for a while now and for some reason I was never able to get it to the table. Until this past board game night at my local pinball club (I feel so lucky to have stumbled upon Capital Pinball here in New Hampshire—which offers various weekly gatherings from board games to video games and of course, pinball!).

Our host for board game night, Eric, helped us get the hang of Gem Getter Pro, a roll-and-write game from designer Daniel Young (most recently mentioned on this Substack for his game Doodle Bash). It’s a quick teach, but like many ‘get the high score’ games, there are a bunch of scoring nuances to remember. Getting the hang of those scoring opportunities is worth it though—this game is the type that makes me want to play many times in a sitting. Thanks, Eric!

Ok, but what’s the game about?

From the publisher:

In Gem Getter Pro, you and your friends compete to dig the most efficient mine and become the gettingest getter of gems! A game is played in 9 rounds. Each round you will roll to determine which polyomino dig patterns are available, then dig your chosen pattern into the mine, and collect heaps of gems with unique scoring conditions.

Efficient digging of rows/columns and around boulders will reward you with bonus gems! Oil keeps the digging machines running longer with bonus digs, while natural gas offers flexibility when choosing a future dig pattern.

There are 8 unique mines to dig in, and 2 roll sheets to choose from for plenty of variety. A game of Gem Getter plays in around 15-30 minutes, and any number of players can join you as long as you have enough sheets!

Simple Choices That Add Up to Something Bigger

Each turn unfolds first with a roll and a simple choice between two sets of blocks. The interesting part comes from how you use those shapes to dig through the game sheet and collect gems and other valuable items.

There’s always a new puzzle to solve when playing GGP. There are multiple game sheets to play, the roll of the dice creates unique combinations and, of course your choices create a ton of replayability. I always felt like I had options, and sometimes I even got the perfect roll that set up combos nicely.

More Than Just Digging for Gems

Once you’ve exhausted all the maps for the original game, be sure to check out the space-mining-themed game Gem Getter Galactic. There are also a ton of expansions for the original game AND a fully functioning and FREE web game where you can try Gem Getter Pro now! Talk about a low barrier to entry.

Daily Challenges

If you are like me and enjoy playing Wordle and the other daily games at The New York Times you might appreciate knowing that in addition to all the great offerings above, Daniel has also released a ‘Daily Gem’ for the Gem Getter digital edition that you can play for free. Here’s my latest attempt…

Your Next Favorite Roll-and-Write?

Combining easy gameplay and interesting decisions with a pile of content makes this game an easy recommendation. You can find Gem Getter Pro on Daniel’s website:

www.clearlysharp.com/games

Want to support PNP Arcade?

Everything here is free to read, and I’d like to keep it that way. If you enjoy the articles, game discoveries, tutorials, and other PNP nonsense I send your way, you can become a paid subscriber to help support the time that goes into making it all happen. No paywalls. Just a way to toss a few bucks in the tip jar if you’d like to help keep PNP Arcade going.
Subscribe now

Tales of the Windward Sea

Set sail with nothing more than one printed page and a pencil. In Tales of the Windward Sea, you captain a pirate ship, explore islands, capture vessels (really interesting combat system—you have to see it to believe it), hunt for treasure and eventually try to retire before the authorities or rival pirates catch up with you. A six-sided die is helpful but optional.

Grab the game at Itch.io

Dungeon Pages: Underboss - Splatter Scarab

The year-long set has been updated with the newest boss and dungeon. This week’s boss is built for control. From the Splatter boss ability that locks a hero down, to the Obfuscate ability that let’s you use the hero’s die—the Scarab feels like a Blue deck in Magic: The Gathering. Link.

Publishers / designers submit your new PNP releases here: PNP Arcade Submission Form.

How to Make Print-and-Play Standees

Cards and tokens get most of the PNP crafting attention, but sometimes a game needs characters that actually stand up. Martin walks through the complete process for creating sturdy, double-sided cardboard standees. It’s especially useful for dungeon crawlers, tactical games and anything else where knowing which direction a character is facing matters.

Here’s a PNP-related crowdfunding campaign that we thought you might find interesting:

A sci-fi horror game where you use dice to traverse shifting landscapes, manage resources, and scavenge grotesque ruins.

Residue®: Solo Survival RPG

Residue is a solo science-fiction survival RPG about exploring a strange, shifting landscape filled with radiation, corrupted machines and the remains of lost civilizations. You’ll explore a randomly generated hex map, search ruins and manage resources such as food, water and battery power using dice. Your explorer is following a mysterious signal known as the Hum while trying to recover fragments of memory and survive whatever is waiting in the ruins. Late pledges are open, including a $24 digital edition (it’s pricier and a lot of printing would be involved, but DAMN it’s so unique looking and beautiful).

Late pledge for Residue

Submit your PNP crowdfunding projects here:
PNP Arcade Submission Form.

Are you looking for your favorite publishers from PNP Arcade? Check out this list.

Alexander Shen: If you’ve never played Quests Over Coffee or any of Alexander’s other fun games, be sure to check out his stuff on Itch.io. Link.
Button Shy Games: With hundreds of games on PNP Button Shy started uploading games on Itch.io and The Game Crafter. Expect regular releases of the older library of games as well as new content to come. Itch.io Link. The Game Crafter Link.
Cezar Capacle: Brazilian game designer, graphic designer, architect and musician. He’s been creating unique games for the past five years, on a variety of genres. Link
Clearly Sharp: Home page for Daniel Young, the designer of Gem Getter and Forest Floor. Link
Daws of Darkness: The Lost Village and its mini-expansion are now available at itch.io. The thick line art style of these co-op games really makes them stand out. Link
Epic Endeavor Games (Jason Greeno): The independent games by JG can be found on his Patreon page. Link.
Grimscribe: If you are looking for the year-long Grimlore series, you can find those here. Publisher Website. PNP Stash.
Jack Neal Games: Jack’s games about power, value, and systems (Rust and Revenue and Charters: Profit Through Public Works) are now available at JackNealGames.com. Link.
Jason Greeno / Epic Endeavor Games: Jason hosts his collection of games like Night Class (superhero roll and write) and The Cursed Menagerie (haunted cards and dice) at his new Itch.io page. Link.
Kealf Games: The new location for all things from Kelvin Soong of Kealf Games. PNP Stash Link.
Mark Tuck: Mark has brought his collection of PNPs (from the beloved Orchard to Pocket Aquarium, and many more) to the Game Crafter. Link.
Nathan Meunier: Featuring many of his games in both physical and PNP, you can now grab Doom Machine, Mindbenders, Hot Garbage and more at doomthoughts.com. Link.
PNP Arcade Publishing: For everything Dungeon Pages (and more to come) check out the PNP Arcade page at Itch.io. Link
Shiny Pigeon Games: PNP Arcade previously hosted Around The World In 15 Minutes, but at their site you can pick up Starfront Scouting Academy and the Packing Party series of games. Link.
We Heart Games: The Itch store for Mike Berg’s games (Crownfell, Exobase, Exoship) has the entire catalog of games. Link.

Would you like to submit a PNP Game?

With the help of publishers, designers and the community we will continue to share PNPs with all of you.

Click this link to submit information about a game

Don’t miss the weekly print and play games and news.

Games featured in these posts are not sponsored.

PNP Friday for August 21, 2026 - The ABC's of PNP: Part Five. Plus PNP news.

Fri, 21 Aug 2026 10:52:56 GMT

Welcome to Print & Play Friday! It’s August 21st and we’ve got a fresh batch of print and play news and games for your reading (and playing) pleasure.

Main Feature: The ABC’s of PNP: Part 5 (VWXYZ)
New Games This Week
Community Spotlight: Centi Print and Play Game Playthrough
Crowdfunding News (PNP Previews & Campaigns)
Where Are They Now?

Important Note

Hey everyone, Jason Tagmire here with a quick update. Unfortunately this is my last post at PNP Arcade. I’ve been working on PNP Arcade with Jason Greeno since Black Friday 2018 and it’s been an extremely rewarding journey. We’ve made a bunch of awesome games together (Dungeon Pages being the first), but we also had the opportunity to share so many games from our favorite designers and publishers.

As many of you know that I also run Button Shy, and I’m leaving PNP Arcade to put all of my focus there. This last year has been really tough for us, starting with the tariff nightmares of 2025, but more recently we’ve had this long switch over from wallets to boxes, and we’ve reshaped our team a bit to do more in-house work. With all of that, I’ve just been loaded with work and unavailable to commit as much time here and I don’t think that’s fair to Jason Greeno. He’s doing a killer job with the blog here and working on more games for PNP Arcade Publishing. I don’t want to hold him back or slow him down while I’m half-available or unavailable.

So I just wanted to say thanks to everyone that has supported us over the years. Thanks to all of the designers and publishers that have trusted us with their games. And a big thanks to Jason Greeno for being a dream partner in both making games, and running PNP Arcade. This couldn’t have went smoother. Looking forward to following along as a fan with all of you.

The ABC’s of PNP: Part 5 (VWXYZ)

JASON TAGMIRE // AUGUST 21, 2026

Welcome to conclusion of the top PNPs alphabetically. Over the past few months we’ve looked at 20 games already and we’re here with the final six. But are there any PNPs that start with X? Or Z? Let’s dive in and see what we found!

The quick rules:

These are the top ranked game for each letter of the alphabet with one big exception - a PNP must be currently available in an official capacity. There are many games tagged as PNP because they had a PNP at some point, but for some it’s been many, many years since a PNP was available. We wanted to make sure this was a current list, at least as of the date of this posting.

Here we go!

Voyages

Rank: 1821
PNP Game Rank: 42

Voyages is a roll-and-write game of open sea adventure and exploration. Each player is the captain of a vessel sailing the seas and requires a single printed game sheet and pencil, while one player also needs to provide three dice.

On a turn, three dice are rolled for all the players. Each player chooses one die for the direction they are sailing, another for how far they sail, and the final die for crew duties aboard their ship. Players score points for visiting different islands, gathering and selling goods for trade, and training their sailors in case they come across the mysterious Dread...

Playable from 1-100+ players, either locally or virtually, Voyages will be supported over time with new expansion content provided for free to original backers of the game.

PNP Link: https://www.postmarkgames.com/voyages

Waypoints

Rank: 3050
PNP Game Rank: 59

Battle the elements in Waypoints as you hike through a landscape of mountains, valleys, lakes, and woodlands. Climb vast summits or take to the rivers, marking your route and recording your experiences as you go.

Each turn, a die is rolled which determines the weather for that hike and how much time is left of the day. Clear skies mean good hiking, while snow or rain will slow you down. With the weather set, all players simultaneously mark a route on their player sheet, moving from waypoint to waypoint. Mountains and valleys are harder to traverse, but the rewards may be worth it.

After four days, each player will have a unique map of their hike, scoring points for animals and features they have encountered.

PNP Link: https://www.postmarkgames.com/waypoints

Xmas Sweater

Rank: 20452
PNP Game Rank: 802

In Xmas Sweater, each player “knits” their own Christmas sweaters by filling the spaces on their “sweater” with numbers.

Players all play at the same time, with everyone trying to fill the rows on their scoresheets with numbers as high as possible in order to score the most points.

To play, you will need three D12 (1 red, 1 green, and 1 white) and one black D6, one printed scoresheet for each player as well as a pencil or pen.

PNP Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/317128/xmas-sweater/files

Yomi

Rank: 2087
PNP Game Rank: 45

Yomi is a card game that simulates a fighting game. It tests your ability to predict how your opponents will act and your ability to judge the relative value of cards from one situation to the next. Also, it lets you do fun combos and be a panda. There are 10 characters to choose from, each with their own deck, abilities, and style. Each deck also doubles as a regular deck of playing cards with beautiful artwork (the complete game features a whopping 120 different character illustrations).

Yomi is the Japanese word for “reading”, in this case as in reading the mind of your opponent. Yomi: Fighting Card Game is a simple competitive card game that simulates a fight between two characters. Each deck in Yomi represents one character, with 10 decks in the first release.

Champion fighting game tournament player and tournament organizer David Sirlin designed the game to test the skills of Valuation and Yomi. Valuation refers to your ability to judge the relative value of moves (or cards) as they change over the course of the game. Yomi, the game’s title, refers to your ability to guess which moves your opponent will make. There is more to it than guessing, though: some players have the uncanny ability to “guess” right almost every time, no matter the game.

The core mechanic is a paper-rock-scissors guessing game between attack, throw, and block/dodge (sometimes modified by special ability cards). Attacks and throws usually let you follow up with combo cards from your hand, while blocks let you draw a card. While it first seems “just random,” you soon discover that the unequal and uncertain payoffs in this guessing game allow you really read what the opponent will do. Yomi captures the kind of mind games that occur during the high level in fighting game tournaments.

PNP Link: https://www.sirlingames.com/shop-yomi

Zombie In My Pocket

Rank: 400
PNP Game Rank:

Zombie in my Pocket is a print-and-play game solo game (see the files section below). The game is free, fits in your pocket, and the modular board combined with the development cards make it a different game every time.

In Zombie in my Pocket, you’re searching for the secret of the evil temple where you can find the item to destroy the zombies rising from the dead. You can pick up items to bash zombies along the way; a machete, golf club, chain saw, or even your former uncle’s grisly femur.

Find the zombie totem, then bury it in the backyard graveyard before midnight and you’ve saved the world. Otherwise, you’re zombie food.

PNP Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/32541/zombie-in-my-pocket-complete-game-package-revised

Thanks for following along this series. Hope you enjoyed a different approach to some top PNP games!

Want to support PNP Arcade?

Everything here is free to read, and I’d like to keep it that way. If you enjoy the articles, game discoveries, tutorials, and other PNP nonsense I send your way, you can become a paid subscriber to help support the time that goes into making it all happen. No paywalls. Just a way to toss a few bucks in the tip jar if you’d like to help keep PNP Arcade going.
Subscribe now

Down the Belly of the Leviathan - Cezar Capacle: I am always excited to see a new release from Cezar Capacle (designer of Wraithound). Immersive themes combined with unique mechanics make for fun exploration. This time, we find ourselves with a one-page dungeon crawler where you delve INTO a leviathan! You’ll have to measure risk vs reward in this 30 minute game.

You can find all of Cezar’s pnps including DBL at Itch.io.

Dungeon Pages: Underboss - Magma Dragon: The year-long set has been updated with the newest boss and dungeon. The floor is literally lava when you use the Magma Dragon’s boss ability—I hope the heroes like it hot! Link.

Publishers / designers submit your new PNP releases here: PNP Arcade Submission Form.

Centi Print and Play Game Playthrough

Centi is built on two familiar roll & write items: a deck of cards and polyominoes, but with its own twist.

You draft cards from a shared market and use them to build five-card poker hands. At the same time, every drafted card gives you a polyomino shape to draw onto your bonus sheet. Fill its different sections, and you begin unlocking multipliers and other useful abilities.

The first player to reach 100 points wins, so it becomes a race between building stronger hands and unlocking the right bonuses.

You can Late Back Centi as part of the PNP Bundle from Florian Fiedler.

Here are a few PNP-related crowdfunding campaigns that we thought you might find interesting:

Out Of Print is Button Shy’s latest tiny game. It’s a bookish modular solo game system where you are attempting to order the major moments of the chosen book where they belong in the three act structure of the story. It’s starting off with Moby Dick and The Tell-Tale Heart with more to come. Fans are requesting their favorite classic books at the Kickstarter page. Get everything so far via PNP for just $5 (save $4 from the upcoming retail price).

Kickstarter link

Badgers is a strategic card battler card game of positioning, timing and survival. It consists of a modular game field and several assymetrical badger decks that ensure no two games are the same.

Gamefound link

Submit your PNP crowdfunding projects here:
PNP Arcade Submission Form.

Are you looking for your favorite publishers from PNP Arcade? Check out this list.

Alexander Shen: If you’ve never played Quests Over Coffee or any of Alexander’s other fun games, be sure to check out his stuff on Itch.io. Link.
Button Shy Games: With hundreds of games on PNP Button Shy started uploading games on Itch.io and The Game Crafter. Expect regular releases of the older library of games as well as new content to come. Itch.io Link. The Game Crafter Link.
Cezar Capacle: Brazilian game designer, graphic designer, architect and musician. He’s been creating unique games for the past five years, on a variety of genres. Link
Clearly Sharp: Home page for Daniel Young, the designer of Gem Getter and Forest Floor. Link
Daws of Darkness: The Lost Village and its mini-expansion are now available at itch.io. The thick line art style of these co-op games really makes them stand out. Link
Epic Endeavor Games (Jason Greeno): The independent games by JG can be found on his Patreon page. Link.
Grimscribe: If you are looking for the year-long Grimlore series, you can find those here. Publisher Website. PNP Stash.
Jack Neal Games: Jack’s games about power, value, and systems (Rust and Revenue and Charters: Profit Through Public Works) are now available at JackNealGames.com. Link.
Jason Greeno / Epic Endeavor Games: Jason hosts his collection of games like Night Class (superhero roll and write) and The Cursed Menagerie (haunted cards and dice) at his new Itch.io page. Link.
Kealf Games: The new location for all things from Kelvin Soong of Kealf Games. PNP Stash Link.
Mark Tuck: Mark has brought his collection of PNPs (from the beloved Orchard to Pocket Aquarium, and many more) to the Game Crafter. Link.
Nathan Meunier: Featuring many of his games in both physical and PNP, you can now grab Doom Machine, Mindbenders, Hot Garbage and more at doomthoughts.com. Link.
PNP Arcade Publishing: For everything Dungeon Pages (and more to come) check out the PNP Arcade page at Itch.io. Link
Shiny Pigeon Games: PNP Arcade previously hosted Around The World In 15 Minutes, but at their site you can pick up Starfront Scouting Academy and the Packing Party series of games. Link.
We Heart Games: The Itch store for Mike Berg’s games (Crownfell, Exobase, Exoship) has the entire catalog of games. Link.

Would you like to submit a PNP Game?

With the help of publishers, designers and the community we will continue to share PNPs with all of you.

Click this link to submit information about a game

Don’t miss the weekly print and play games and news.

Games featured in these posts are not sponsored.

PNP Friday for August 14, 2026 - What I Love About Hero-ish. Plus PNP news.

Fri, 14 Aug 2026 12:21:22 GMT

Welcome to Print & Play Friday! It’s August 14th and we’ve got a fresh batch of print and play news and games for your reading (and playing) pleasure.

Main Feature: What I Love About Hero-ish
In Case You Missed It
New Games This Week
Community Spotlight: Building Custom Dice PNP Tutorial
Crowdfunding News (PNP Previews & Campaigns)
Where Are They Now?

What I Love About Hero-ish

JASON GREENO // AUGUST 14, 2026

I was recently asked to be interviewed for a book focusing on solo games. During the interview, one of the questions asked about how I got into game design. As I thought about my early childhood—and the little things that pointed me toward this career—I was reminded of my earliest creations.

I couldn’t find examples of my oldest game designs, but these images show what came soon after: more stat-based heroes as I started to play more traditional D&D, and then, later, design my own games, like this Nightmare on Elm Street-themed RPG.

One of those games was a child’s interpretation of what ‘playing D&D’ was like. Since I didn’t fully grasp the complexity of roleplaying (my older cousin had revealed the game to me), I was limited in how to recreate the experience for my brother and neighborhood friends. The result was a rudimentary, one-page point-crawl with simplistic resolution mechanics and a lot of improvisational storytelling. While we all had a blast playing this homebrew D&D, the reality is, we weren’t really playing Dungeons and Dragons. Instead, it was more of a modern-day point crawl (a map with key points of interest that characters explore), with key events and monster encounters at each point along the way. A loot-gathering-fest, if you will.

And I think that’s why I’m stoked to have found Hero-ish. A point-crawl from small-game designer TechDweeb. His game scratches the itch of choice, character powers and gold hoarding while only asking about 10-15 minutes of the player’s day (not least of which is because the game is so dang hard to win!).

In Hero-ish, you traverse a fantasy world depicted (beautifully) on a single page with various stops along the way for monster bashing. You start at a town and must decid on a direction and, importantly, how long to be on the road. This last decision can be even more important than which monster you choose to face. You see, every decision in the game costs money. Movement, monster battling, and ability activations all cost a coin. And these are in short supply!

As described by the designer, this game is a puzzle as much as it is a dungeon crawl. How you manage your resources (hiring heroes, spending money, choosing enemies) is critical to your success (and survival!).

Fans of Balatro and similar games will appreciate the simple yet entertaining dice system which recreates the aforementioned video game in one important way: set collection. In a Hero-ish battle you first roll 3 dice to establish the first round of combat (think Texas Hold’em), then if you choose to stay and fight you can pay to see another die rolled. Finally there is a fifth die that can be purchased. If the end result of the dice matches the monster’s target goal you’ve defeated it (hired heroes give you extra dice and abilities). Fail to meet the goal? Sorry, you lose all your wagered gold AND any hired heroes are slain. You CAN try again, but you better have a stack of coins ready because in my playthroughs I found it very hard to come back from a defeat.

One of the reasons I found the game so difficult was the fact that even if you win a battle and gain your bet’s worth of coins (plus your bet), you don’t have immediate access to your winnings! Nope. You need to cash those bounties in—back at town. And moving back to town costs money. And moving back to town causes hired heroes to retire. The next time I play I think I will try the ‘Easy’ mode or maybe ‘Story mode’. For me, that feels like the right challenge for the game’s length, but your mileage may vary.

The game is free to try and I encourage you to watch the designer’s tutorial video, which has some sly humor.

Want to support PNP Arcade?

Everything here is free to read, and I’d like to keep it that way. If you enjoy the articles, game discoveries, tutorials, and other PNP nonsense I send your way, you can become a paid subscriber to help support the time that goes into making it all happen. No paywalls. Just a way to toss a few bucks in the tip jar if you’d like to help keep PNP Arcade going.
Subscribe now

If you give Hero-ish a try I’d love to hear your thoughts. I’m hoping the designer continues to iterate on this framework as I think there’s a lot of fun to be had in the point-crawl space.

If you somehow missed Solatro, this is a fun one. TechDweeb takes the basic idea behind Balatro and figures out how to play it solo with nothing more than a regular deck of cards. Build poker hands, chase increasingly difficult scores, and earn upgrades that help keep your run going. Best of all, the whole thing is name-your-own-price, with printable rules that can even be folded into a tiny booklet that fits inside a deck of cards.

Check out Solatro on itch.io

Dungeon Pages: Underboss - Warrick the Wicked: The year-long set has been updated with the newest boss and dungeon. With each status effect, Warrick’s boss ability gets stronger emulating his willingness to experiment with the unexpecting hero. Link.

Publishers / designers submit your new PNP releases here: PNP Arcade Submission Form.

Building Custom Dice PNP Tutorial

Making custom dice for a PNP game can sound like more trouble than it’s worth, but this tutorial makes the process surprisingly approachable. Shamus (Out of the Box) walks us through his simple method for building your own dice, including how to give them nice rounded corners. A handy little trick to keep in your PNP crafting toolbox.

Here are a few PNP-related crowdfunding campaigns that we thought you might find interesting:

Whispers of the Deep is an underwater skirmish game packed with deep-sea exploration and Lovecraftian horror. The campaign is focused on the physical game, but there's PNP content available too (3D Printer Needed), including a new solo expansion. If creepy creatures, diving suits, and exploring places you probably shouldn't be exploring sound like your thing, this one is worth a look.

Gamefound link

Poll & Write Clacton is a small print-and-play game built around predicting the results of the Clacton by-election. Make your predictions, see how the real results shake out, and score based on how close you came. The Kickstarter has ended, but late pledges are still open if you want to check it out.

Kickstarter link

Launching soon…

Six Eyes is a narrative-driven roll-and-write game, every choice matters. Will you spend your turn rushing to a crime scene, working your contacts, or following the paper trail? You’ll need to balance luck and deduction to seek out the essential clues, avoid red herrings, and crack the case before time runs out!

Follow the camapign

Submit your PNP crowdfunding projects here:
PNP Arcade Submission Form.

Are you looking for your favorite publishers from PNP Arcade? Check out this list.

Alexander Shen: If you’ve never played Quests Over Coffee or any of Alexander’s other fun games, be sure to check out his stuff on Itch.io. Link.
Button Shy Games: With hundreds of games on PNP Button Shy started uploading games on Itch.io and The Game Crafter. Expect regular releases of the older library of games as well as new content to come. Itch.io Link. The Game Crafter Link.
Cezar Capacle: Brazilian game designer, graphic designer, architect and musician. He’s been creating unique games for the past five years, on a variety of genres. Link
Clearly Sharp: Home page for Daniel Young, the designer of Gem Getter and Forest Floor. Link
Daws of Darkness: The Lost Village and its mini-expansion are now available at itch.io. The thick line art style of these co-op games really makes them stand out. Link
Epic Endeavor Games (Jason Greeno): The independent games by JG can be found on his Patreon page. Link.
Grimscribe: If you are looking for the year-long Grimlore series, you can find those here. Publisher Website. PNP Stash.
Jack Neal Games: Jack’s games about power, value, and systems (Rust and Revenue and Charters: Profit Through Public Works) are now available at JackNealGames.com. Link.
Jason Greeno / Epic Endeavor Games: Jason hosts his collection of games like Night Class (superhero roll and write) and The Cursed Menagerie (haunted cards and dice) at his new Itch.io page. Link.
Kealf Games: The new location for all things from Kelvin Soong of Kealf Games. PNP Stash Link.
Mark Tuck: Mark has brought his collection of PNPs (from the beloved Orchard to Pocket Aquarium, and many more) to the Game Crafter. Link.
Nathan Meunier: Featuring many of his games in both physical and PNP, you can now grab Doom Machine, Mindbenders, Hot Garbage and more at doomthoughts.com. Link.
PNP Arcade Publishing: For everything Dungeon Pages (and more to come) check out the PNP Arcade page at Itch.io. Link
Shiny Pigeon Games: PNP Arcade previously hosted Around The World In 15 Minutes, but at their site you can pick up Starfront Scouting Academy and the Packing Party series of games. Link.
We Heart Games: The Itch store for Mike Berg’s games (Crownfell, Exobase, Exoship) has the entire catalog of games. Link.

Would you like to submit a PNP Game?

With the help of publishers, designers and the community we will continue to share PNPs with all of you.

Click this link to submit information about a game

Don’t miss the weekly print and play games and news.

Games featured in these posts are not sponsored.

PNP Friday for August 7, 2026 - The ABC's of PNP: Part Four. Plus PNP news.

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 13:52:00 GMT

Welcome to Print & Play Friday! It’s August 7th and we’ve got a fresh batch of print and play news and games for your reading (and playing) pleasure.

Main Feature: The ABC’s of PNP: Part 4 (PQRSTU)
New Games This Week
Community Spotlight: Asmodee Print and Play?!
Crowdfunding News (PNP Previews & Campaigns)
Where Are They Now?

The ABC’s of PNP: Part 4 (PQRSTU)

JASON TAGMIRE // AUGUST 7, 2026

Welcome to part four of the top PNPs by starting letter. We’ve been combing through the top print and play games at BGG and sharing just one game for each letter, looking for the highest ranked games. Today we’re diving into the back half of the alphabet, looking at P through U. Some big ones in this group!

The quick rules:

These are the top ranked game for each letter of the alphabet with one big exception - a PNP must be currently available in an official capacity. There are many games tagged as PNP because they had a PNP at some point, but for some it’s been many, many years since a PNP was available. We wanted to make sure this was a current list, at least as of the date of this posting.

Here we go!

Palm Island

Rank: 1072
PNP Game Rank: 22

Palm Island is a portable game that you can take with you anywhere. Sitting, standing, waiting, riding, flying, relaxing, alone, or together you can play Palm Island no table required.

Using a deck transforming mechanic a player uses just 17 cards over 8 rounds to shape their island and overcome its unique challenges. Store resources to pay for upgrades and upgrade buildings to access new abilities. Each decision you make will alter your village from round to round. At the end of 8 rounds calculate your victory points.

PLAY SOLO working to gain achievements and unlock new abilities to help your village reach even greater heights. PLAY COOPERATIVELY by working together to successfully prepare your village before natural disasters strike. PLAY COMPETITIVELY by racing to purchase bonuses, or in casual mode by meeting specific criteria before your opponent.

Add villagers to any game mode that you may recruit to your village and use their abilities to score more points than your opponent.
The game comes with 2 player decks, competitive cards, cooperative cards and solo feat cards. Multiple games can be combined to add even more players.

The Quiet Year

Rank: 4429
PNP Game Rank: 100

The Quiet Year is a map game. You define the struggles of a post-apocalyptic community, and attempt to build something good within their quiet year. Every decision and every action is set against a backdrop of dwindling time and rising concern.
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. One quiet year, with which to build our community up and learn once again how to work together. Come Winter, the Frost Shepherds will arrive and we might not survive beyond that. But we don’t know about that yet. What we know is that right now, in this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.

The game plays through a year of relative peace for a small post-apocalyptic community. Players take turns playing through weeks in this year. Each week, the active player draws a card from the top of the deck (which represents the year), and reads the card. They carry out the actions or answer the questions that are specified on the card. Once the card is resolved, some quick upkeep occurs: projects that the community has in motion get closer to completion. Finally, the active player picks an action from a short list: hold a discussion, make a decision, discover something new.

The three actions give players a meaningful and difficult set of choices: do you spend time listening to others, in the hopes that they’ll listen to you in kind? Do you pursue your own goals, ostensibly for the good of the whole community? Do you focus inward or outward?

The game is played using a deck of cards – each of the 52 cards corresponds to a week during the quiet year. Each card triggers certain events – bringing bad news, good omens, project delays and sudden changes in luck. At the end of the quiet year, the Frost Shepherds will come, ending the game.

Rolling Realms

Rank: 1138
PNP Game Rank: 26

In the early days of the coronavirus, a time of self-isolation for many people, Jamey decided to create an infinitely scaling roll-and-write game to teach and play with people around the world via Facebook Live.

In Rolling Realms, players compete to earn the most stars in a series of minigames over 3 rounds. This is a roll-and-write game, meaning that players will write on the game components using dry-erase markers.

Each turn, one player rolls 2 dice, and all players use the dice results on their realm cards to generate resources and earn stars. After 3 rounds, the player with the most stars wins!

Secret Hitler

Rank: 268
PNP Game Rank: 1

Secret Hitler is a dramatic game of political intrigue and betrayal set in 1930s Germany. Each player is randomly and secretly assigned to be a liberal or a fascist, and one player is Secret Hitler. The fascists coordinate to sow distrust and install their cold-blooded leader; the liberals must find and stop the Secret Hitler before it’s too late. The liberal team always has a majority.

At the beginning of the game, players close their eyes, and the fascists reveal themselves to one another. Secret Hitler keeps his eyes closed, but puts his thumb up so the fascists can see who he is. The fascists learn who Hitler is, but Hitler doesn’t know who his fellow fascists are, and the liberals don’t know who anyone is.

Each round, players elect a President and a Chancellor who will work together to enact a law from a random deck. If the government passes a fascist law, players must try to figure out if they were betrayed or simply unlucky. Secret Hitler also features government powers that come into play as fascism advances. The fascists will use those powers to create chaos unless liberals can pull the nation back from the brink of war.

The objective of the liberal team is to pass five liberal policies or assassinate Secret Hitler. The objective of the fascist team is to pass six fascist policies or elect Secret Hitler chancellor after three fascist policies have passed.

Tiny Epic Galaxies

Rank: 400
PNP Game Rank: 4

In Tiny Epic Galaxies each player controls a galactic empire, aiming to expand their influence by acquiring highly contested planets and increasing their cosmic armada. The game revolves around an innovative dice-rolling combo mechanic. The number of dice you roll is determined by the strength of your galaxy. Each die is engraved with symbols representing the various actions you can take, such as moving a spaceship, increasing your culture or energy resources, or advancing your political or economic influence over newly discovered planets.

Through careful planning, you must make the most out of your turn, taking the available actions in whichever order you consider most beneficial. But be careful, as each of your opponents can choose to follow each action you take by expending valuable resources. This means that it can always be your turn, even when it is someone else’s turn!

Players will colonize new planets throughout the game, thereby earning victory points and accumulating special abilities which they can activate for their galactic empire. Careful spending of resources will ensure the fastest growth of your empire, while allowing you to receive the biggest possible pay‐off from the actions you take.

Will your influence be enough to control the most powerful planets in the galaxy? Will you be able to meet your secret objective along the way? Will your empire stand victorious?

Unfair

Rank: 998
PNP Game Rank: 19

Build the city’s greatest theme park, whatever it takes!

Mix your favourite themes, from Pirate, Robot, Vampire, Jungle, Ninja, and Gangster. Build attractions and upgrade them to match blueprints, stack up towering rides, or simply make the most cash.

But watch out – your competitors may pay off the safety inspectors to close your rides or hire hooligans to vandalise your park! Build wisely and protect your park to make sure you come out on top!

Whatever happens, it’s bound to be Unfair.

See you next time with the end of the alphabet. Some tough letters there. Will there be games for X and Z? We’ll see!

The Secrets of Langton Manor is a print-and-play escape room game for 1-4+ players. Immerse yourself in an episodic adventure set in a mysterious mansion, full of puzzles, clues, and hidden messages, all woven into a rich, unfolding story. Each episode offers 1-2 hours of gameplay, perfect for an evening of puzzle-solving mystery and exploration:

Episode 1 is free to download on Itch.io

HERO-ISH is a solo epic-ish dice adventure!

Roll dice, explore the land, fight monsters, assemble parties of hapless heroes, and haul trophies back to town before your luck runs out.

Free download on Itch.io

Dungeon Pages: Underboss - Laisa Constrictor: The year-long set has been updated with the newest boss and dungeon. While it may be trickier for Laisa to find her elbow room in a dungeon, she more than makes up for it with her ability to squeeze the heroes! Link.

Publishers / designers submit your new PNP releases here: PNP Arcade Submission Form.

Asmodee Print and Play?!

Here’s one that seems to fly surprisingly far under the radar: Asmodee has an entire Print & Play library offering free downloadable games, demos, expansions, solo modes, and other extras from some very recognizable tabletop brands.

You’ll find printable content for games including Catan, Carcassonne, 7 Wonders Duel, Splendor, Five Tribes, Arkham Horror, Marvel Champions, Twilight Imperium, Unlock!, Love Letter, and plenty more. Some are complete or demo games, while others add new scenarios or ways to play games you already own.

For print-and-play fans, it’s a surprisingly deep little corner of Asmodee’s catalog—and definitely worth poking around.

Here are a few PNP-related crowdfunding campaigns that we thought you might find interesting:

WHOA. Why isn’t this campaign getting noticed? It looks really solid.

Legends of Mana Island is a new solo roll & write print-at-home game designed by the creator of the Kinroku tabletop comic series. Every single character and map features 100% hand-drawn art made by human hands.

In Legends of Mana Island, you’re a young wizard facing the arcane trials. Roll dice to summon powerful Familiars, defend against sneaky Goblins, and hatch your own mythical beasts. Gather the most Mana Points to become a legendary wizard!

Kickstarter link

Doodle Bash is a drawing game that packs an insane amount of replayability and depth into a single printed page thanks to a companion app that can be launched by scanning the QR code on your game sheet.

Kickstarter link

Submit your PNP crowdfunding projects here:
PNP Arcade Submission Form.

Are you looking for your favorite publishers from PNP Arcade? Check out this list.

Alexander Shen: If you’ve never played Quests Over Coffee or any of Alexander’s other fun games, be sure to check out his stuff on Itch.io. Link.
Button Shy Games: With hundreds of games on PNP Button Shy started uploading games on Itch.io and The Game Crafter. Expect regular releases of the older library of games as well as new content to come. Itch.io Link. The Game Crafter Link.
Cezar Capacle: Brazilian game designer, graphic designer, architect and musician. He’s been creating unique games for the past five years, on a variety of genres. Link
Clearly Sharp: Home page for Daniel Young, the designer of Gem Getter and Forest Floor. Link
Daws of Darkness: The Lost Village and its mini-expansion are now available at itch.io. The thick line art style of these co-op games really makes them stand out. Link
Epic Endeavor Games (Jason Greeno): The independent games by JG can be found on his Patreon page. Link.
Grimscribe: If you are looking for the year-long Grimlore series, you can find those here. Publisher Website. PNP Stash.
Jack Neal Games: Jack’s games about power, value, and systems (Rust and Revenue and Charters: Profit Through Public Works) are now available at JackNealGames.com. Link.
Jason Greeno / Epic Endeavor Games: Jason hosts his collection of games like Night Class (superhero roll and write) and The Cursed Menagerie (haunted cards and dice) at his new Itch.io page. Link.
Kealf Games: The new location for all things from Kelvin Soong of Kealf Games. PNP Stash Link.
Mark Tuck: Mark has brought his collection of PNPs (from the beloved Orchard to Pocket Aquarium, and many more) to the Game Crafter. Link.
Nathan Meunier: Featuring many of his games in both physical and PNP, you can now grab Doom Machine, Mindbenders, Hot Garbage and more at doomthoughts.com. Link.
PNP Arcade Publishing: For everything Dungeon Pages (and more to come) check out the PNP Arcade page at Itch.io. Link
Shiny Pigeon Games: PNP Arcade previously hosted Around The World In 15 Minutes, but at their site you can pick up Starfront Scouting Academy and the Packing Party series of games. Link.
We Heart Games: The Itch store for Mike Berg’s games (Crownfell, Exobase, Exoship) has the entire catalog of games. Link.

Would you like to submit a PNP Game?

With the help of publishers, designers and the community we will continue to share PNPs with all of you.

Click this link to submit information about a game

Don’t miss the weekly print and play games and news.

Games featured in these posts are not sponsored.

PNP Friday for July 31, 2026 - What I Love About Master of Coin

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 10:40:40 GMT

Welcome to Print & Play Friday! It’s July 31st and we’ve got a fresh batch of print and play news and games for your reading (and playing) pleasure.

Main Feature: What I Love About Master of Coin
New Games This Week
Community Spotlight: Playthrough of Signal & Noise
Crowdfunding News (PNP Previews & Campaigns)
Where Are They Now?

What I Love About Master of Coin

JASON GREENO // JULY 31, 2026

When it comes to the world of print and play gaming there are movers and there are shakers. I think of movers as the designers and publishers who produce lots of games in a short period of time. Shakers on the other hand are the creators who push the industry in a unique direction, constantly innovating the format. It’s easy to drop Postmark Games into the latter category—their games like Voyages and 52 Realms have brought us fun new mechanics and concepts. That’s not to say that the team isn’t prolific: Their latest game, Master of Coin is the 8th release in a little over 3 years!

The game immediately caught my attention in a weird way—asking the customer to flip coins for random results is not a new concept. As a game designer myself, I’ve dabbled with coins as a component, but often felt stumped by its limits. I immediately had to investigate to see what veteran designers Matthew Dunstan and Rory Muldoon had cooked up!

And I was not disappointed. Master of Coin is a masterclass in decision density and component economy, packing an astonishing number of meaningful choices into a tiny footprint while repeatedly finding clever new ways to make a single penny carry mechanical weight.

This creates an abundance of satisfying decisions and multiple paths to victory. Plus it’s just a lot of fun to puzzle out your best score each time you play!

The game supports solo play or any number of players competing for the highest score.

Setup and first turns

Setup is super easy. Place a coin on the leftmost space of the year track and then flip 4 coins from your supply. All other players will take four coins and match what you flipped (I was playing solo). You then can spend these coins to utilize buildings on the left side of your sheet, commit coins to the barracks, or invest in technology. Once you‘ve filled a building with the appropriate coins you can immediately use the ability (in the appropriate phase). This can create a chain of combos where you gain access to new buildings or effects.

Diving In and Watching Videos

To get up to speed quickly I watched the playthrough video from Tom (slickerdrips) and I highly recommend you do the same. There aren't any particularly complex rules, but the many interconnected systems that make this game sing can feel a little overwhelming at first. However it’s so worth it to learn the game.

Locked Coins

Probably the trickiest concept in the game is how coins have different positions (Locked and Unlocked) creating different meaning. When you place a coin on a space, it starts as unlocked. This means that when you activate a building’s effect all of the coins you used to construct that building will be sent back to your supply. Its a costly but necessary step as you build your empire.

Locked coins allow you to leave the coin on the building after using the building effect. There are a few different ways to Lock your coins (Church, Prosperity rewards etc). The only downside to Locking a coin is that your limited pool of resources are even tighter while the coins stay on the page. It creates a nice tense decision where you can’t do everything each game.

Buildings

One item I’d recommend ignoring in your first play are the victory point icons (in the diamond shape). Those kept confusing me as if they were a cost to build. Once I got past that and realized most 2nd tier buildings (middle of the page) only required a single build icon (and the coins of course) the game started flowing a lot smoother for me. You need one Build icon (Hammer) and a combination of coins shown to construct the inner buildings (and also the monuments).

How to Attack

If you want to conquer territories you’ll need to place coins in the Barracks section of the map (upper left). For each coin there you will flip it—heads is a success. If you equal or exceed the battle value on a province you can capture that space and gain the effect shown. I tried building a Catapult (which provides +2 Battle success) early on but it was a costly resource to use repeatedly.

Technologies

These upgrades act similar to Buildings, but you don't have to use an effect to lock a coin here. Simply fill the tech space with the appropriate amount of coins and you will permanently earn the technology’s effect (you slide one of the coins right to indicate this and return the rest to the supply). These are expensive upgrades so you’ll have to choose carefully where to commit your resources.

The Eras Tour

Postmark Games has promised more gamesheets in the Master of Coin release (called Eras), so we can expect a shakeup of the gameplay and new civilization puzzles to solve. There’s just one pledge level ($5) and that gets you access to all five Era sheets to be released in the future.

You can pledge at Kickstarter here. Campaign ends Sunday, August 2.

I received a complimentary review copy of the game. However, this did not influence my opinions or conclusions.

Bad Bets is an auction game where players bid to win the right to roll dice. Winners make everybody else lose money, but hopefully paid less than what was rolled.

Grab the game for free at BGG

Dungeon Pages: Underboss - Soul Feaster: The year-long set has been updated with the newest boss and dungeon. The Sphinx and it’s illusion will confuse and confound the heroes and what’s more? It will deal damage while its doing it. Link.

Publishers / designers submit your new PNP releases here: PNP Arcade Submission Form.

Signal and Noise Playthrough (BGG 2026 Solitaire Print and Play Contest)

Shamus (Out of the Box) takes a look at Signal and Noise, an entry in the BGG 2026 Solitaire Print and Play Contest. This is a robot programming game. You are remotely controlling six robots with a dynamic instruction set, but every turn cycle noise gets into the signal and can endanger your plans.

Here are a few PNP-related crowdfunding campaigns that we thought you might find interesting:

Kickstarter link

The guys from Postmark Games (Voyages) are back with their latest game!

The King is dead. Long live the Queen. By order of her Royal Highness, gold is to be released from the palace coffers to be assigned to projects of prosperity and growth by appointment of the Master of Coin.

Master of Coin is a 1-many player print at home game from the award winning designers of Voyages and 52 Realms: Adventures. With a printed gamesheet and a handful of coins of any denomination, players will take actions building infrastructure, researching technology, and reclaiming provinces through military might as they develop their own fantasy kingdom. Each round, a pool of flipped coins is used to activate heads and tails spaces on your individual kingdom sheet. At the end of 12 rounds, the player with the most points is crowned the winner.

Kickstarter link

The Best of the Indie Scene, In One Bundle.

From the publisher:

A few weeks ago, Chris Backe and I put out a call to the tabletop community: Show us your best Print & Play designs. The response blew us away. We received 64 incredible submissions from passionate indie designers around the world. We played, tested, and debated until we narrowed it down to the top finalists—and then we handed the microphone over to you. The community voted, the dust settled, and the winner emerged. Now, we’ve bundled the winning game from the contest and two of our own games into one digital package. By backing this project, you aren't just getting three games, you are directly supporting the indie designers who poured their hearts into these designs, and you are helping fund the prize pool for the winning creators. Zero shipping costs. Zero wait times for manufacturing. Just pure, printable fun.

Gamefound link

Coming soon to crowdfunding…

Out Of Print is a bookish solo game system coming from Button Shy, where the player is a fictional character trying to order the pages of their book in order to get out, before the antagonist locks them in the book forever. That sounds quite intense, but the gameplay is quite cozy. You’ll play cards to manipulate dice values, while watching out for the tough antagonist effects. Each book plays differently, such as in Moby Dick you’ll deal with the water moving cards around. Upcoming modules include The Tell-Tale Heart, A Christmas Carol, Wizard Of Oz and more. Coming to Kickstarter soon! Link.

Submit your PNP crowdfunding projects here:
PNP Arcade Submission Form.

Are you looking for your favorite publishers from PNP Arcade? Check out this list.

Alexander Shen: If you’ve never played Quests Over Coffee or any of Alexander’s other fun games, be sure to check out his stuff on Itch.io. Link.
Button Shy Games: With hundreds of games on PNP Button Shy started uploading games on Itch.io and The Game Crafter. Expect regular releases of the older library of games as well as new content to come. Itch.io Link. The Game Crafter Link.
Cezar Capacle: Brazilian game designer, graphic designer, architect and musician. He’s been creating unique games for the past five years, on a variety of genres. Link
Clearly Sharp: Home page for Daniel Young, the designer of Gem Getter and Forest Floor. Link
Daws of Darkness: The Lost Village and its mini-expansion are now available at itch.io. The thick line art style of these co-op games really makes them stand out. Link
Epic Endeavor Games (Jason Greeno): The independent games by JG can be found on his Patreon page. Link.
Grimscribe: If you are looking for the year-long Grimlore series, you can find those here. Publisher Website. PNP Stash.
Jack Neal Games: Jack’s games about power, value, and systems (Rust and Revenue and Charters: Profit Through Public Works) are now available at JackNealGames.com. Link.
Jason Greeno / Epic Endeavor Games: Jason hosts his collection of games like Night Class (superhero roll and write) and The Cursed Menagerie (haunted cards and dice) at his new Itch.io page. Link.
Kealf Games: The new location for all things from Kelvin Soong of Kealf Games. PNP Stash Link.
Mark Tuck: Mark has brought his collection of PNPs (from the beloved Orchard to Pocket Aquarium, and many more) to the Game Crafter. Link.
Nathan Meunier: Featuring many of his games in both physical and PNP, you can now grab Doom Machine, Mindbenders, Hot Garbage and more at doomthoughts.com. Link.
PNP Arcade Publishing: For everything Dungeon Pages (and more to come) check out the PNP Arcade page at Itch.io. Link
Shiny Pigeon Games: PNP Arcade previously hosted Around The World In 15 Minutes, but at their site you can pick up Starfront Scouting Academy and the Packing Party series of games. Link.
We Heart Games: The Itch store for Mike Berg’s games (Crownfell, Exobase, Exoship) has the entire catalog of games. Link.

Would you like to submit a PNP Game?

With the help of publishers, designers and the community we will continue to share PNPs with all of you.

Click this link to submit information about a game

Don’t miss the weekly print and play games and news.

Games featured in these posts are not sponsored.

PNP Friday for July 24, 2026 - The ABC's of PNP: Part Three. Plus PNP news.

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 13:22:02 GMT

Welcome to Print & Play Friday! It’s July 24th and we’ve got a fresh batch of print and play news and games for your reading (and playing) pleasure.

Main Feature: The ABCs of PNP: Part 3 KLMNO
New Games This Week
Community Spotlight: How to Make a Print and Play Game
Crowdfunding News (PNP Previews & Campaigns)
Where Are They Now?

The ABC’s of PNP: Part 3 (KLMNO)

JASON TAGMIRE // JULY 24, 2026

Welcome to part three of our listing of the top ranked PNP games on BGG, as represented by their starting letter. We’ve made it through A through J so far (with J being a tough one to find any PNP game), and now we’re looking at K through O. These one’s mostly skewed pretty high in the ranks so you may have heard of most of them, but there’s one that I’m confident will be new to you. If not, let us know!

The quick rules:

These are the top ranked game for each letter of the alphabet with one big exception - a PNP must be currently available in an official capacity. There are many games tagged as PNP because they had a PNP at some point, but for some it’s been many, many years since a PNP was available. We wanted to make sure this was a current list, at least as of the date of this posting.

Here we go!

K is for King Of The Tabletop

Rank: 9353
PNP Game Rank: 272

Each player controls a kingdom made up of land tiles of different terrains (mountains, forest, etc), castles, settlements, and people and creatures.

The object of the game is to have a certain amount of prestige, judged by the size of one’s kingdom, treasury, and the number of special heroic characters inhabiting the kingdom, as well as possession of a Grand Muniment (very large castle).

This game was originally published in Dragon #77. Clarifications appeared in Dragon #78, along with an additional rules clarification in the “Out On a Limb” column in Dragon #81.

Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/35420/king-of-the-tabletop-complete-pdf

L is for The Last Lighthouse

Rank: 3477

PNP Game Rank: 71

At the edge of the horizon, the nightmares begin. You, and you alone, defend the lighthouse that keeps them at bay. Can you keep this beacon shining until the dawn, or will you succumb to the spreading darkness?

In The Last Lighthouse. your goal is to survive all of the cards in the Nightmare deck, keeping the Lighthouse lit despite the spreading darkness caused by any unchecked Nightmares. Each of the 16 Nightmare cards doubles as a Trap used to control or eliminate these threats, and each feature unique abilities that change up how they are placed or used.

The Last Lighthouse is the sixth game in the Simply Solo series. Protect against an ever-growing line of unique nightmares by deploying specialized traps. Place traps wisely to eliminate as many nightmares as possible before they damage your lighthouse and ultimately destroy it. With elegant rules and multiple levels of difficulty, The Last Lighthouse offers plenty of challenge for both casual and dedicated players.

Link: https://buttonshygames.itch.io/the-last-lighthouse

M is for Monikers

Rank: 305

PNP Game Rank: 3

Monikers is a party game based on the public domain game Celebrities, where players take turns attempting to get their teammates to guess names by describing or imitating well-known people.

In the first round, clue givers can say anything they want, except for the name itself. For the second round, clue givers can only say one word. And in the final round, clue givers can’t say anything at all: they can only use gestures and charades.

Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/109438/monikers-print-and-play-pdf

N is for Naturopolis

Rank: 3022

PNP Game Rank: 58

Wind whistling, bees buzzing, rivers rolling along: the sounds of the great outdoors are everywhere. This open countryside is unspoiled by human hands, and it’s your job to keep it that way. Make sure the tourists and campers have somewhere to go, but don’t let their presence distract you from what really matters.

In Naturopolis, players work together to build a new landscape. Using only 18 cards and a variable scoring system, the game is never the same twice. Naturopolis is the 3rd game in our series of standalone and combinable Sprawlopolis games. It brings mountains, lakes, forests and meadow blocks to the game, with the added bonus of campsites, rivers and double line roads.

First, players will randomly flip over 3 cards to set the scoring rules for the game. Each game has drastically different scoring rules in unique combinations, and a new score to beat, ranging from 6 to 51 points.

Each turn, players will play one card from their hand to the growing landscape, trying to score as many points as possible. Players will have to communicate and plan without revealing their own cards in order to most efficiently develop large areas in each of the 4 zone types. When all cards have been placed, the game ends and players see if they have met the dynamically generated minimum score for their game.

Link: https://buttonshygames.itch.io/naturopolis

O is for One Deck Dungeon

Rank: 1014

PNP Game Rank: 21

One Deck Dungeon is a card game “roguelike” — a dungeon delve that is different every time, difficult to survive, with a character you build up from scratch. The deck consists of various foes to combat and other perils from the dungeon. Each card, though, depicts both the obstacle to overcome and the potential rewards for doing so. When you defeat a card, you claim it as either experience, an item, or a skill, tucking it under the appropriate side of your character card to show its benefits.

The longer you take exploring the dungeon, the deeper you’ll delve, and the difficulty will scale up quickly! If you make it far enough, you’ll have to fight the dungeon boss. Survive, and you’ll be a legend!

One Deck Dungeon is designed for 1-2 players. With multiple sets, you can add more players.

Link: https://asmadigames.com/ODD_PnP.pdf

See you next time!

Each week we share the new releases in the world of Print and Play. Here’s what’s new this week:

Button Shy is has some more older games back on PNP. This week there’s Food Chain Island and its expansions. Grab them at itch.io for just $1 each:

Food Chain Island: Tough Skies

Food Chain Island: Lost Beasts

Food Chain Island: Legendary Creatures

Food Chain Island: Friendly Waters

Food Chain Island (Base Game)

Lockpick (prototype game): The 2026 Solitaire Print and Play Contest at Board Game Geek is underway and we have another entry to highlight. Lock Pick, designed by Stuart Jantzen, is a nail-biting lockpicking simulator roll-and-write game for one or more players. You can help Stuart improve Lockpick by playing the prototype and offering feedback! Link.

Dungeon Pages: Underboss - Soul Feaster: The year-long set has been updated with the newest boss and dungeon. So. Much. Dice. Mitigation. The Soul Feaster’s Drain effect will give you a ton of dice control and paired with Obfuscate, you’ll have a steel grip on your dungeon and any pesky hero intruders! Link.

Publishers / designers submit your new PNP releases here: PNP Arcade Submission Form.

How to Make a Print and Play Game

If you’ve ever wondered about making your own print and play game—either to sell or just play with your friends, then this video has helpful insights. Joe shares his miss-steps and advice for designing a successful game in the print and play industry.

Here are a few PNP-related crowdfunding campaigns that we thought you might find interesting:

Kickstarter link

The Best of the Indie Scene, In One Bundle.

From the publisher:

Gamefound link

On the foggy morning of 10 November 1444, the fate of South-Eastern Christendom hangs on by a thread as your heavily outnumbered Crusader army stands before the terrifying mass of Sultan Murad II’s Ottoman host near the Black Sea port of Varna. You are outnumbered nearly two to one however, your heavy cavalry advantage can make the difference.

Medieval Command: Battle of Varna 1444 is a solo Print & Play wargame that simulates the epic last ditch crusader attempt to free the Balkans from Ottoman rule. You must master a smart dice-drafting system where GREEN dice power Ottoman attacks and Crusader defenses, while RED dice fuel your own offensives.

Outnumbered by the Ottomans, you cannot win a war of attrition against these odds. Your only hope is to tactically bank your dice to unleash devastating Boosted Actions like a thunderous, multi-die cavalry charge to smash the elite Janissary Wall before your lines crumble and the young King Władysław III is slain in the mud.

Kickstarter link

Coming soon to crowdfunding…

Submit your PNP crowdfunding projects here:
PNP Arcade Submission Form.

Are you looking for your favorite publishers from PNP Arcade? Check out this list.

Alexander Shen: If you’ve never played Quests Over Coffee or any of Alexander’s other fun games, be sure to check out his stuff on Itch.io. Link.
Button Shy Games: With hundreds of games on PNP Button Shy started uploading games on Itch.io and The Game Crafter. Expect regular releases of the older library of games as well as new content to come. Itch.io Link. The Game Crafter Link.
Cezar Capacle: Brazilian game designer, graphic designer, architect and musician. He’s been creating unique games for the past five years, on a variety of genres. Link
Clearly Sharp: Home page for Daniel Young, the designer of Gem Getter and Forest Floor. Link
Daws of Darkness: The Lost Village and its mini-expansion are now available at itch.io. The thick line art style of these co-op games really makes them stand out. Link
Epic Endeavor Games (Jason Greeno): The independent games by JG can be found on his Patreon page. Link.
Grimscribe: If you are looking for the year-long Grimlore series, you can find those here. Publisher Website. PNP Stash.
Jack Neal Games: Jack’s games about power, value, and systems (Rust and Revenue and Charters: Profit Through Public Works) are now available at JackNealGames.com. Link.
Jason Greeno / Epic Endeavor Games: Jason hosts his collection of games like Night Class (superhero roll and write) and The Cursed Menagerie (haunted cards and dice) at his new Itch.io page. Link.
Kealf Games: The new location for all things from Kelvin Soong of Kealf Games. PNP Stash Link.
Mark Tuck: Mark has brought his collection of PNPs (from the beloved Orchard to Pocket Aquarium, and many more) to the Game Crafter. Link.
Nathan Meunier: Featuring many of his games in both physical and PNP, you can now grab Doom Machine, Mindbenders, Hot Garbage and more at doomthoughts.com. Link.
PNP Arcade Publishing: For everything Dungeon Pages (and more to come) check out the PNP Arcade page at Itch.io. Link
Shiny Pigeon Games: PNP Arcade previously hosted Around The World In 15 Minutes, but at their site you can pick up Starfront Scouting Academy and the Packing Party series of games. Link.
We Heart Games: The Itch store for Mike Berg’s games (Crownfell, Exobase, Exoship) has the entire catalog of games. Link.

Would you like to submit a PNP Game?

With the help of publishers, designers and the community we will continue to share PNPs with all of you.

Click this link to submit information about a game

Don’t miss the weekly print and play games and news.

Games featured in these posts are not sponsored.

PNP Friday for July 17, 2026 - What I Love About Polaroid. Plus PNP news.

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 13:08:07 GMT

Welcome to Print & Play Friday! It’s July 17th and we’ve got a fresh batch of print and play news and games for your reading (and playing) pleasure.

Main Feature: What I Love About Polaroid
New Games This Week
Community Spotlight: Tabletop Tolson looks at an App Driven Print and Play
Crowdfunding News (PNP Previews & Campaigns)
Where Are They Now?

What I Love About P.O.L.A.R.O.I.D.

JASON GREENO // JULY 17, 2026

The 2026 One-Page RPG Jam is now live over at Itch.io and that means there’s a whole bunch of fun new (and free) games for you to try! This week I’m going to share my playthrough of one of those submissions. The game is Polaroid (designed by Myrmidont)—I solo supernatural investigation themed game where you get to create your own mystery-solving-polaroid-corkboard!

Concept

This game is a solo journaling RPG with a neat dice drop / sticky note mechanic. By using a few dice and a drop-page to generate random prompts, you create a story turn after turn around mysterious occurrences in your town. You write the journal entries on the sticky notes which are pretend polaroid photos. Don’t worry if you don’t have a game master to play with, this game is meant to be played solo, thought I think it’d be a blast to play with friends too.

Each turn you’ll roll a black die (sets the scene), a blue die (provides helpful information) and a red die (introduces the supernatural element and the danger). There’s a few things you can tell from these dice rolls:

Where the dice land: Allows you to incorporate the random word it lands on into your story.
What the die color is: As mentioned above teh die colors correlate to scenery, clues and dangers.
What the die result is: If the die is a low value, the story is only lightly impacted but if its a higher value this is a critical turning point in the story. If you roll dice that do not match, you successfully uncover new information. If you roll doubles, you still succeed, but at a cost. If you roll three of a kind? BAD STUFF HAPPENS!

Setup

After crafting the dice drop page (it’s easy and you probably don’t need to fold and tape the walls but it’s a neat way to keep the dice contained.

Create your first polaroid with a drawing of your character. Number teh Polaroid to keep the story order.

Then write on the back the ‘why’ reason for your character to be involved in the mystery.

My character is ‘too curious for his own good’.

Gameplay

Each turn you will roll the dice and check the words under each of the dice and imagine how these words fit into the story. Draw your next Polaroid showing how the events unfold. Write on the back of each polaroid the gist of what’s happening.

My character found a murder victim in the park. The mystery begins!

You are required to attach to a previous polaroid/sticky creating a chain. If dice ever land on a sticky note, the underlying drawings get reactivated as part of the story.

Upon further inspection of the body our hero finds strange blue worm-like creatures! What are these glowing creatures?

If you ever roll doubles, your character must pay a cost for their success. The game starts to feel like Fiasco in that your situation starts to degrade quickly.

Things to a turn for the worse when talking with a scientist (who is totally not a muppet) while the blue worm BIT my character! Turns out these creatures suppress string theory vibrations allowing a person who eats them (yuck!) to see past The Dark Veil!

If you start to see connections between parts of the story you draw a connecting red line from polaroid to polaroid—BUT you cannot draw on the corkboard so you’ll need to collect enough polaroids to solve the mystery.

My character realized too late that sometimes, when you peer into the Veil, the Veil peers back!

I had fun creating my story and seeing where the dice prompts led me. If you want to create you own story you can grab the game for free here.

2026 One-Page RPG Jam | Myrmidont’s Designer Page

Each week we share the new releases in the world of Print and Play. Here’s what’s new this week:

Button Shy is has some more older games back on PNP. This week there’s three Skulls of Sedlec expansions. Grab them at itch.io for just $1 each.

Champions Itch | The Game Crafter

Merchants Itch | The Game Crafter

Zealots Itch | The Game Crafter

Dungeon Pages: Underboss - Greta, 2nd Sword: The year-long set has been updated with the newest boss and dungeon. Let this be a lesson to those who seek power. Going from a boundary-pushing inventor to a boundary-pushing undead lich is a sure fire way to achieve even greater power! Link.

Publishers / designers submit your new PNP releases here: PNP Arcade Submission Form.

Tabletop Tolson looks at an App Driven Print and Play

I wanted to highlight this one because it’s a bit different. I know that a large chuck of gamers will avoid app-driven games because they want to separate from the screens a bit. But does adding PNP to the mix change anything? The PNP group is quite unique and has embraced many other areas of technology in adapting and crafting their games. So I’m curious what you all think?

Here are a few PNP-related crowdfunding campaigns that we thought you might find interesting:

This one is available for late pledges, but it’s a great magazine with a FREE Print-and-Play game in every issue.

Published quarterly since 2012, Casual Game Insider (CGI) is the premier magazine for casual board gaming. Each beautifully designed, digital issue immerses you in the vibrant tabletop world! We cater to gamers of all experience levels, focusing on light, easy-to-learn games and the passionate people who create them. Enjoy exclusive interviews, coverage of the hottest conventions, informative reviews, and many other engaging articles. You'll also receive a FREE Print-and-Play game in every issue! Link

And here’s an upcoming game:

Submit your PNP crowdfunding projects here:
PNP Arcade Submission Form.

Are you looking for your favorite publishers from PNP Arcade? Check out this list.

Alexander Shen: If you’ve never played Quests Over Coffee or any of Alexander’s other fun games, be sure to check out his stuff on Itch.io. Link.
Button Shy Games: With hundreds of games on PNP Button Shy started uploading games on Itch.io and The Game Crafter. Expect regular releases of the older library of games as well as new content to come. Itch.io Link. The Game Crafter Link.
Cezar Capacle: Brazilian game designer, graphic designer, architect and musician. He’s been creating unique games for the past five years, on a variety of genres. Link
Clearly Sharp: Home page for Daniel Young, the designer of Gem Getter and Forest Floor. Link
Daws of Darkness: The Lost Village and its mini-expansion are now available at itch.io. The thick line art style of these co-op games really makes them stand out. Link
Epic Endeavor Games (Jason Greeno): The independent games by JG can be found on his Patreon page. Link.
Grimscribe: If you are looking for the year-long Grimlore series, you can find those here. Publisher Website. PNP Stash.
Jack Neal Games: Jack’s games about power, value, and systems (Rust and Revenue and Charters: Profit Through Public Works) are now available at JackNealGames.com. Link.
Jason Greeno / Epic Endeavor Games: Jason hosts his collection of games like Night Class (superhero roll and write) and The Cursed Menagerie (haunted cards and dice) at his new Itch.io page. Link.
Kealf Games: The new location for all things from Kelvin Soong of Kealf Games. PNP Stash Link.
Mark Tuck: Mark has brought his collection of PNPs (from the beloved Orchard to Pocket Aquarium, and many more) to the Game Crafter. Link.
Nathan Meunier: Featuring many of his games in both physical and PNP, you can now grab Doom Machine, Mindbenders, Hot Garbage and more at doomthoughts.com. Link.
PNP Arcade Publishing: For everything Dungeon Pages (and more to come) check out the PNP Arcade page at Itch.io. Link
Shiny Pigeon Games: PNP Arcade previously hosted Around The World In 15 Minutes, but at their site you can pick up Starfront Scouting Academy and the Packing Party series of games. Link.
We Heart Games: The Itch store for Mike Berg’s games (Crownfell, Exobase, Exoship) has the entire catalog of games. Link.

Would you like to submit a PNP Game?

With the help of publishers, designers and the community we will continue to share PNPs with all of you.

Click this link to submit information about a game

Don’t miss the weekly print and play games and news.

Games featured in these posts are not sponsored.

PNP Friday for July 10, 2026 - The ABC's of PNP: Part 2. Plus PNP news.

Fri, 10 Jul 2026 11:56:20 GMT

Welcome to Print & Play Friday! It’s July 10th and we’ve got a fresh batch of print and play news and games for your reading (and playing) pleasure.

Main Feature: The ABC’s of PNP - Part 2: FGHIJ
New Games This Week
Community Spotlight: The Best Way to Make Your Own Card Game at Home!
In Case You Missed It
Crowdfunding News (PNP Previews & Campaigns)
Where Are They Now?

The ABC’s of PNP: Part 2 FGHIJ

JASON TAGMIRE // JULY 10, 2026

A little over a month ago we started the ABC’s of PNP, a look at the top ranked PNP games on Board Game Geek, for each letter of the alphabet. We started with A (Acropolis) and ended with E (Evolution).

We’re back this week with the next five letters, and this one was tricky as there are not a lot of games that start with the letter J. In fact, I looked at the first 500 PNP games listed before I found a single game that started with J. There was a backup plan in case none existed, but we’ll save that plan for another day.

Before we get into the next 5, here are the quick rules:

These are the top ranked game for each letter of the alphabet with one big exception - a PNP must be currently available in an official capacity. There are many games tagged as PNP because they had a PNP at some point, but for some it’s been many, many years since a PNP was available. We wanted to make sure this was a current list, at least as of the date of this posting.

Onto the games!

F is for For Northwood! A Solo Trick Taking Game

Rank: 449
PNP Game Rank: 7

For Northwood! is a solo hand management and precision trick-taking game. Your objective is to peacefully unify the kingdom of Northwood through conversations with their rulers. Over eight rounds, you must visit eight animal fiefs and engage their rulers in dialogue (tricks). Each ruler’s suit represents the trump for that fief. Each ruler also requires you to win an exact number of tricks to join your alliance, so the game gets harder as your options dwindle.

You start with four allies, each with an ability that you can use once per visit. These abilities can make you draw, discard, or otherwise manipulate your hand to help you hit the target score. Once you’ve won a ruler over, you can pull them in to substitute temporarily for one of your allies, if you need a more specific set of abilities to tackle the harder fiefs.

With multiple difficulty levels, 24 rulers (12 used per game), and a 16-scenario challenge booklet, For Northwood!offers hours of gameplay with a new puzzle every time!

Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/220228/9-card-per-page-pnp-file

G is for Grove: 9-Card Solitaire Game

Rank: 1093
PNP Game Rank: 23

Grove is the citrusy sequel to the award winning Orchard 9 card solitaire game.
Its 18 cards feature orange, lemon and lime trees and a new ‘wild card’ element, glades. These open spaces without trees, combined with a new scoring mechanic, offer more ways and opportunities to increase your harvest and create a greater variety of gameplay and strategies compared to Orchard.

You’ll also find a cheeky squirrrel, who can either help or hinder your fruit picking, as well as a wheelbarrow - useful if you manage to get an extra large haul.

The card backs feature recipe challenges with various scoring conditions and target scores. These provide a win/lose condition (as an alternative to the standard game’s ‘beat your score’) for those that prefer it - and add even more variety to the game.

Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/215930/grove-pnp-edition

H is for Hitster

Rank: 486
PNP Game Rank: 9

Create an instant party with HITSTER, the music card game of the century!
Listen to over 100 years of amazing hits, take turns arranging them in chronological order on your music timeline and create your trip down memory lane.
The first player to collect 10 hits is crowned the HITSTER

HITSTER is the perfect game for an evening with lots of laughing, singing, dancing and sharing memories. Simply open the box, scan a song card and let the music do the rest to create an instant party. So what are you waiting for?

HITSTER is the music game in which you don’t have to be a music expert. Simply guess if a song was released before or after other songs in your music timeline. The futher you are in building your timeline the more challenging it becomes. Your chances of winning increases if you can also name the artists and song titles.

Link: https://nordics.hitstergame.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/HITSTER-Print-and-Play.pdf

I is for In Vino Morte

Rank: 4352
PNP Game Rank: 98

In the first course, it was definitely in the soup. After that, it’s not as clear. Perhaps in the Béarnaise sauce?

Regardless, two things are abundantly clear: someone is poisoning the guests at this party, and the wine that is being poured may be the last you ever taste.

In Vino Morte is a tiny little bluffing/deduction game.

In the game, the dealer will choose and distribute wine/poison cards and each player has an opportunity to keep theirs and drink it, or swap with another player. It’s quick, fun and sneaky and works with a large group.

Link: https://buttonshygames.itch.io/in-vino-morte

J is for Jacynth

Rank: 15132
PNP Game Rank: 529

A territory control game for 1-3 players, using the Decktet.

Jacynth is among the oldest cities, and a map of its streets is a record of history. It is a haphazard maze of overlapping interests and neighborhoods, with intricate social bonds tying one block to the next. You could control the city if you could control a nexus in that maze of ancient intrigue, but first you would have to find it.

Link: http://decktet.wikidot.com/game:jacynth
Decktet Link: https://www.decktet.com/download/decktet.pdf

Thanks for joining us in the second part of our ABCs of PNPs. And check out the games above as some of them are 100% free! We’ll be back again with more soon.

Each week we share the new releases in the world of Print and Play. Here’s what’s new this week:

Button Shy is back with their new releases of older games with a whole slew of ROVE expansions. Grab them at itch.io for just $1 each.

Alien Activities - Itch | The Game Crafter

Cosmic Crisis - Itch | The Game Crafter

Crawler - Itch | The Game Crafter

Fascinating Flora - Itch | The Game Crafter

Icy Incidents - Itch | The Game Crafter

Reconfigured - Itch | The Game Crafter

Tourist Traps - Itch | The Game Crafter

Dungeon Pages: Underboss - Greta, 2nd Sword: The year-long set has been updated with the newest boss and dungeon. A renowned sword expert, Greta also is a skilled leader. This dual threat allows her to damage an enemy and then send in the guards to mop up the leftovers. Link.

Publishers / designers submit your new PNP releases here: PNP Arcade Submission Form.

The Best Way to Make Your Own Card Game at Home!

In this video, Andrew shows a fast and efficient method for creating a print-and-play game right at home.

Whether you’re a seasoned tabletop gamer or just curious about DIY board games, you’ll learn:

How to cut and prep your cards for the best shuffle feel
The pros and cons of cardstock vs. printer paper
Why sleeving can save you time and money

Every once in awhile we like to share a game that isn’t brand new but might have slipped by.

Longtime PNP fans will be familiar with creator Alexander Shen (Shenbot on Itch.io) who has a playful art style and experimental game design approach. One of Shenbot’s most recent releases is a small dungeon building game called Sunday Dungeon Map Co.

From the creator:

You’ve been hired by the local survey company to map the dungeons beneath the town. Some are vast, some are tiny, and some fall somewhere in between. Monsters and treasure lurk within their halls.

Enter at your own risk. Leave whenever you wish.

You can find Sunday Dungeon Map Co. and all of Shenbot’s games here.

Here are a few PNP-related crowdfunding campaigns that we thought you might find interesting:

Froggy Dungeon is a new solo print-and-play dungeon crawler designed by the creator of the Kinroku tabletop comic series, every single character, item, and 3D dungeon maps features 100% hand-drawn art. It’s a solo adventure packed with thematic roguelike experience, fast-paced combat action and charming frog heroes.

PNP files available for $7. Link.

2D6 Void is set in a modern day Coradine, the setting from 2D6 Dungeon. You play as a pilot adventurer, with a specific profession and set of skills. You have volunteered to infiltrate the Dark Hulk and battle your way through ten levels to the engine room where you will blow up the ship that is laying waste to your planet. You will then become a Hero. 2D6 Void is a standalone game that uses the 2D6 Dungeon Engine. It is a sci-fi dungeon crawler, print and play, roll and write game designed by Toby Lancaster.

You can still Late Back this game here.

Submit your PNP crowdfunding projects here:
PNP Arcade Submission Form.

Are you looking for your favorite publishers from PNP Arcade? Check out this list.

Alexander Shen: If you’ve never played Quests Over Coffee or any of Alexander’s other fun games, be sure to check out his stuff on Itch.io. Link.
Button Shy Games: With hundreds of games on PNP Button Shy started uploading games on Itch.io and The Game Crafter. Expect regular releases of the older library of games as well as new content to come. Itch.io Link. The Game Crafter Link.
Cezar Capacle: Brazilian game designer, graphic designer, architect and musician. He’s been creating unique games for the past five years, on a variety of genres. Link
Clearly Sharp: Home page for Daniel Young, the designer of Gem Getter and Forest Floor. Link
Daws of Darkness: The Lost Village and its mini-expansion are now available at itch.io. The thick line art style of these co-op games really makes them stand out. Link
Epic Endeavor Games (Jason Greeno): The independent games by JG can be found on his Patreon page. Link.
Grimscribe: If you are looking for the year-long Grimlore series, you can find those here. Publisher Website. PNP Stash.
Jack Neal Games: Jack’s games about power, value, and systems (Rust and Revenue and Charters: Profit Through Public Works) are now available at JackNealGames.com. Link.
Jason Greeno / Epic Endeavor Games: Jason hosts his collection of games like Night Class (superhero roll and write) and The Cursed Menagerie (haunted cards and dice) at his new Itch.io page. Link.
Kealf Games: The new location for all things from Kelvin Soong of Kealf Games. PNP Stash Link.
Mark Tuck: Mark has brought his collection of PNPs (from the beloved Orchard to Pocket Aquarium, and many more) to the Game Crafter. Link.
Nathan Meunier: Featuring many of his games in both physical and PNP, you can now grab Doom Machine, Mindbenders, Hot Garbage and more at doomthoughts.com. Link.
PNP Arcade Publishing: For everything Dungeon Pages (and more to come) check out the PNP Arcade page at Itch.io. Link
Shiny Pigeon Games: PNP Arcade previously hosted Around The World In 15 Minutes, but at their site you can pick up Starfront Scouting Academy and the Packing Party series of games. Link.
We Heart Games: The Itch store for Mike Berg’s games (Crownfell, Exobase, Exoship) has the entire catalog of games. Link.

Would you like to submit a PNP Game?

With the help of publishers, designers and the community we will continue to share PNPs with all of you.

Click this link to submit information about a game

Don’t miss the weekly print and play games and news.

Games featured in these posts are not sponsored.

PNP Friday for July 3, 2026 - What I Love About Morbid Fortress. Plus PNP news.

Fri, 03 Jul 2026 13:44:26 GMT

Welcome to Print & Play Friday! It’s July 3rd and we’ve got a fresh batch of print and play news and games for your reading (and playing) pleasure.

Main Feature: What I Love About Morbid Fortress
New Games This Week
Community Spotlight: “So, Gudnak is an incredible game” from Questing Beast
Crowdfunding News (PNP Previews & Campaigns)
Where Are They Now?

What I Love About Morbid Fortress

JASON GREENO // JULY 3, 2026

If you’re like me, and you love small dice games with unique themes, you’ll be excited to hear that Nathan Meunier—the designer of Doom Machine—is back! After a bit of a hiatus, the designer is returning with not one, but three new games on the horizon (including a spiritual successor to Doom Machine)!

With his first release we are being introduced to Morbid Fortress:

That Morbid Fortress isn’t going to finish building itself! Flex your necromantic might and craft the darkest, most grisliest, gnarliest stronghold of pure unholiness. But wait, what’s that on the horizon? CRUSADERS! Drat…that complicates things a bit.”

It’s released as part of his new product line, the Write and erase Solo Series.

What is the Write and Erase Solo Series?

Each game in the series takes the concept of writing on cards with a dry erase pen and puts a different spin on it. Throw in a few dice, and it’s a weird thinky party.

It’s actually a super smart way to avoid the need for a bunch of tokens, making the game even more travel friendly. There’s also something very satisfying about inscribing your choices on the cards. Cards are easy to erase and reset and there’s no need to shuffle cards that have been marked (because you are only marking cards already on the table.

What I Love About Morbid Fortress

Beyond the gothic theme, and amazing art, I really enjoy the choices presented by Morbid Fortress. Do I construct a building that can generate resources, help me score additional victory points or block incoming damage from crusaders? The dry erase mechanic allows the player to get multiple uses out of the minimal components, tracking your progress at constructing these monoliths.

Exploration of the system and how the card effects interact with each other is another part of the fun. Some structures offer the ability to store valuable ‘Haunted Skulls’, while others act as offensive towers to blast incoming attackers.

You’ll be able to setup and play a game quickly which is always appreciated. The game does require a bunch of black ink but only two sheets of cards so it’s not a lot of components to cut and assemble.

Looking forward to expansions

Morbid Fortress feels like a great start to the series and to the game’s mythos. I’m looking forward to seeing how Nathan expands the game’s card pool, mechanics and world. I’d love to see additional combo possibilities that enhance the strategies and tactics available. Maybe we’ll see more treacherous enemy effects to flesh out the difference between Crusader Attack Strength and Holy Strength?

A more elaborate wish and maybe too far out of scope, would be an optional expansion with Enemy cards. These could form an enemy row offering individual targets for my magical missile towers!

Where you can find it

Morbid Fortress is now available for purchase and download (it’s print and play only for the time being) at Nathan’s site, DoomThoughts.com.

How to Play Video

Here’s a quick tutorial from the game’s designer:

Each week we share the new releases in the world of Print and Play. Here’s what’s new this week:

Dungeon Pages: Underboss - Magma Dragon: The year-long set has been updated with the newest boss and dungeon. The floor is lava! The unbridled amount of damage you can wield with this boss, by creating rows of fire is epic. Hurry, Underboss year-long adventure is currently 25% off for a limited time! Link.

Sprawlopolis Expansions from Button Shy: These have been unable to get via PNP for a while now, and are now available at Button Shy’s itch.io page. There’s Beaches - which provides a tough edge to your cities, the Interstate that divides your city in half, Roadwork, Points of Interest, Construction Zones, and the almighty Wrecktar. Each expansion PNP is just $1.

Beaches https://buttonshygames.itch.io/sprawlopolis-beaches
Interstate https://buttonshygames.itch.io/sprawlopolis-interstate
Roadwork https://buttonshygames.itch.io/sprawlopolis-roadwork
Wrecktar, Construction Zones and Points of Interest https://buttonshygames.itch.io/sprawlopolis-wrecktar-construction-zones-points-of-interest

Button Shy has also been working on their release schedule to get older games back out via PNP and here’s what to expect throughout July.

07/10/2026
ROVE: Alien Activities
ROVE: Cosmic Crisis
ROVE: Crawler
ROVE: Fascinating Flora
ROVE: Icy Incidents
ROVE: Reconfigured
ROVE: Tourist Traps

7/17/2026
Skulls of Sedlec: Monstrance
Skulls of Sedlec: Executioners
Skulls of Sedlec: Castle Guards
Skulls of Sedlec: Poets
Skulls of Sedlec: Crown Of Bones
Skulls of Sedlec: Champions
Skulls of Sedlec: Merchants
Skulls of Sedlec: Jesters
Skulls of Sedlec: Zealots
Skulls of Sedlec: Ultimate Champions

7/24/2026
Worder
Food Chain Island: Lost Beasts
Food Chain Island: Friendly Waters
Food Chain Island: Tough Skies
Food Chain Island: Legandary Creatures

7/31/2026
Booked Bands
Naturopolis: Nessie and Points Of Interest
Naturopolis: Elevation

Plus some other special requests, and DIE Ball hopefully before July is over.

Publishers / designers submit your new PNP releases here: PNP Arcade Submission Form.

“So, Gudnak is an incredible game” -Questing Beast

Questing Beast takes a look at Gudnak, basically starting out by saying it replaces Summoner Wars, which is quite a declaration as Summoner Wars is excellent. Check out their full video below, and grab the Gudnak PNP here: https://gudnak.com/print-and-play

It’s the last 3 days for Dawn Chorus at Kickstarter, a printable roll-and-write woodland bird experience to share with your friends and family. Dawn Chorus brings the bring the great outdoors to your tabletop, where you assume the role of a beloved UK garden bird to compete for control of territory, resources, and a place to roost. Just £3 (about $5). Link.

Just in time to pledge alongside watching the World Cup, there’s Up the Table, a print-and-play roll-and-write tabletop game that puts you in the shoes of a football (soccer) manager. Bring It Home is a standalone expansion that introduces national team management to the game as 32 countries from around the globe come together to compete in the illustrious International Cup. You will seek to guide one of these aspiring nations to eternal glory. Rewards vary from $14 to $20. Link.

Submit your PNP crowdfunding projects here:
PNP Arcade Submission Form.

Are you looking for your favorite publishers from PNP Arcade? Check out this list.

Alexander Shen: If you’ve never played Quests Over Coffee or any of Alexander’s other fun games, be sure to check out his stuff on Itch.io. Link.
Button Shy Games: With hundreds of games on PNP Button Shy started uploading games on Itch.io and The Game Crafter. Expect regular releases of the older library of games as well as new content to come. Itch.io Link. The Game Crafter Link.
Cezar Capacle: Brazilian game designer, graphic designer, architect and musician. He’s been creating unique games for the past five years, on a variety of genres. Link
Clearly Sharp: Home page for Daniel Young, the designer of Gem Getter and Forest Floor. Link
Daws of Darkness: The Lost Village and its mini-expansion are now available at itch.io. The thick line art style of these co-op games really makes them stand out. Link
Epic Endeavor Games (Jason Greeno): The independent games by JG can be found on his Patreon page. Link.
Grimscribe: If you are looking for the year-long Grimlore series, you can find those here. Publisher Website. PNP Stash.
Jack Neal Games: Jack’s games about power, value, and systems (Rust and Revenue and Charters: Profit Through Public Works) are now available at JackNealGames.com. Link.
Jason Greeno / Epic Endeavor Games: Jason hosts his collection of games like Night Class (superhero roll and write) and The Cursed Menagerie (haunted cards and dice) at his new Itch.io page. Link.
Kealf Games: The new location for all things from Kelvin Soong of Kealf Games. PNP Stash Link.
Mark Tuck: Mark has brought his collection of PNPs (from the beloved Orchard to Pocket Aquarium, and many more) to the Game Crafter. Link.
Nathan Meunier: Featuring many of his games in both physical and PNP, you can now grab Doom Machine, Mindbenders, Hot Garbage and more at doomthoughts.com. Link.
PNP Arcade Publishing: For everything Dungeon Pages (and more to come) check out the PNP Arcade page at Itch.io. Link
Shiny Pigeon Games: PNP Arcade previously hosted Around The World In 15 Minutes, but at their site you can pick up Starfront Scouting Academy and the Packing Party series of games. Link.
We Heart Games: The Itch store for Mike Berg’s games (Crownfell, Exobase, Exoship) has the entire catalog of games. Link.

Would you like to submit a PNP Game?

With the help of publishers, designers and the community we will continue to share PNPs with all of you.

Click this link to submit information about a game

Don’t miss the weekly print and play games and news.

Games featured in these posts are not sponsored.

PNP Friday for June 26, 2026 - The State Of Button Shy In The PNP World. Plus PNP news.

Fri, 26 Jun 2026 13:26:04 GMT

Welcome to Print & Play Friday! It’s June 26th and we’ve got a fresh batch of print and play news and games for your reading (and playing) pleasure.

Main Feature: The State Of Button Shy In The PNP World
New Games This Week
Community Spotlight: BGG 2026 Solitaire Print and Play Contest — Three Heart Hero
Crowdfunding News (PNP Previews & Campaigns)
Where Are They Now?

[Image]

The State Of Button Shy In The PNP World

JASON TAGMIRE // JUNE 26, 2026

Jason here with a well overdue Button Shy update. We’ve been getting a lot of requests for games, and we figured that since we were such a large part of PNP Arcade that we would give a big update of where we are with our PNPs.

After PNP Arcade closed up shop, we started releasing our older games at two different sites: itch.io and The Game Crafter. I think our catalog should be pretty much identical at both by now, but there may be a few exceptions.

We’ve added a ton of games there, but we had like 400 PNPs at PNP Arcade, so we still have a long way to go.

So what’s the plan?

Let’s start with the back catalog.

The Button Shy Back Catalog PNP Plan

I think we can easily commit to a few games/expansions each week. Friday’s are pretty celebratory here at PNP Arcade, so let’s make sure we get a few old PNPs out every Friday. We can add them to the bottom of the New Releases section of this newsletter, as they are New Releases of old games.

With so many old games, it takes time and trying to figure out where to even start is a whole process, so we’re going to lean on the requests that we see online. We’ve been seeing them on social media and discord, so please keep that up.

I’d also like to keep a running schedule so everyone knows what’s coming. Let’s try it.

The Button Shy New Game PNP Plan

We have at least one new game each month. Once August hits, we’re going to have at least two. We also have expansions. But our new games are a little complicated so we’re still figuring it out, and opening it all up for community discussion.

New Micro Games

The micro game line is what we previously called our wallet game line. The first of these are Astro ROVE, The Rise Of A Jarl, Everything Machine, and Shaper. These games are starting to come to PNP in August, with 1-2 per month.

There are two interesting notes with these games.

One expansion comes inside of each boxed game. But the expansion is a bonus there, it’s not actually part of the base game. We would normally sell the PNP separately. But there’s a second little wrinkle…
The rules have a new layout. They are twice as tall as our previous rules, with a front and back side. So it’s going to take up a little more space, and the rules include both the base game and the expansion. They also have some advertisements for other boxed games, which is a little irrelevant in a PNP game. Curious if anyone has come across anything like this in other PNP rules? We don’t want to make a separate version of the rules for the PNP but we could separate things out a little and split the base game and expansion, and drop the ads. It’s more work, but it helps clean everything up.

Front side of new rules

Back side of new rules

New Modular Games

We started this new line of games called Modular Games. The Modular concept works across both physical and PNP releases, and perhaps even better on PNP.

Modular Games are games where you need two parts to play. So at a basic level, imagine a fighting game that needs two character decks. The idea is that we could make lots of those parts and you can play with any two. They also step outside of Button Shy’s norms and use additional components like dice and cubes. For the physical releases, these are provide-your-own components, but PNP folk already have to do that on everything.

The first game is DIE Ball a 2P head-to-head fantasy sports battle game (with a solo mode) and it’s on Kickstarter now with two 9-card team modules. The next is Out Of Print, a solo game about escaping from classic public domain books, with a base set and 9-card book modules. And the third is Castletowne, a multiplayer drafting and tile laying game about building your own castle, with 9-card room sets.

A complete game of DIE Ball in progress, with just 9 cards per team.

After the initial campaigns for each of these, we plan to have new modules every month. So there will be 1-3 of these in any given month, also boosting up our new release numbers.

DIE Ball Campaign LINK: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/239309591/die-ball/
DIE Ball is on Kickstarter now with a $4 PNP pledge that fulfills in a month. We’ll have new teams on Itch.io and The Game Crafter each month in 2026.

I think that just about covers everything. We’re working hard to get as much old stuff out as possible, and get you all of the new games both at itch.io and The Game Crafter. We just need to ramp up the schedule with more consistent releases. In the meantime, if anyone has requests for old PNPs to bump up the priority list, feel free to let us know in th comments here, on social media, or in the Button Shy Discord server. We keep an eye on those.

A few links to everything Button Shy PNP:

Button Shy on itch.io: https://buttonshygames.itch.io
Button Shy on The Game Crafter: https://www.thegamecrafter.com/designers/button-shy-games-s-games
Current DIE Ball Kickstarter campaign: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/239309591/die-ball/
Upcoming Button Shy Summer collection campaign, featuring PNPs of The Cursed Cat, Reawaken, Forest Rivals, and Crime Sprawl: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/239309591/button-shy-micro-games-summer-2026-collection

Each week we share the new releases in the world of Print and Play. Here’s what’s new this week:

TRICUS MAXIMUS

The crowd of 200,000 Romans roars, a thundering crescendo that continues to build. You check that the reins are tight around your torso, and utter a quick prayer to Sol. Your four horses are tense with explosive power, ready to release. The mappa is dropped, the carceres spring open, and the race is begun...

TRICUS MAXIMUS is a chariot-racing trick-taking game for three or four players. Players will be playing cards to tricks and then moving their chariots around the Circus Maximus based on the results of those tricks. Through canny play and clever positioning, they’ll vie to cross the finish line first.

Cappallo.ca (free game download)

Dungeon Pages: Underboss - Armored Worm: The year-long set has been updated with the newest boss and dungeon. This boss is all about encircling the heroes and then squeezing their Good Dice to inflict damage. Hurry, Underboss year-long adventure is currently 25% off for a limited time! Link.

Publishers / designers submit your new PNP releases here: PNP Arcade Submission Form.

The 2026 Solitaire Print and Play contest is underway at BGG! If you’re looking for new games on the horizon, and in some cases, playable prototypes of upcoming pnp games, this is the motherload!

We’ll try to feature new games from the contest periodically (as long as they have a playable prototype for you to try) but please keep in mind that these games are still in development (so they may change over time, have rules that are still getting worked out, and made by designers for free).

This week we’re highlighting 3 Heart Hero

Three Heart Hero is a solo puzzle card game inspired by retro Japanese action RPGs, particularly the Legend of Zelda series.

• Players: 1

• Time: 10 min

• Components: 18 cards (one quest), or 54 cards (target full version)

• Core Mechanics: Move Through Deck, Hand / Deck Management, Spatial Puzzle

Check out the work in progress page at BGG (Where you can also download the pnp files)

Reports of dragon sightings have been pouring in from across the kingdom, but certainly these beasts are far from your quiet village… right? As the founder of a growing settlement, you have no time to worry about these rumors when there’s infrastructure to be built! In Dragon vs Kingdom, you’ll build quaint villages and do your best to defend them from the dragon threats! Kingdom builders are rewarded for mindful positioning of structures and brave assaults on the invading beasts.

In Dragon vs Kingdom, a pass & play game you’ll also get to control the dragon on one of the maps once each round! Burn down your opponents’ carefully constructed villages and score points for the destruction.

Kickstarter link

Squeaky Clean looks light and silly, but beneath the laundry puns is an unforgiving push-your-luck experience. This game is NOT. COZY. It features:

solo, in-hand game you can play anywhere
washing machine cards that rotate and tumble
tight push-your-luck
4 escalating difficulty levels
laundry puns
cute hand-stitched rule book

Kickstarter link

Submit your PNP crowdfunding projects here:
PNP Arcade Submission Form.

Are you looking for your favorite publishers from PNP Arcade? Check out this list.

Alexander Shen: If you’ve never played Quests Over Coffee or any of Alexander’s other fun games, be sure to check out his stuff on Itch.io. Link.
Button Shy Games: With hundreds of games on PNP Button Shy started uploading games on Itch.io and The Game Crafter. Expect regular releases of the older library of games as well as new content to come. Itch.io Link. The Game Crafter Link.
Cezar Capacle: Brazilian game designer, graphic designer, architect and musician. He’s been creating unique games for the past five years, on a variety of genres. Link
Clearly Sharp: Home page for Daniel Young, the designer of Gem Getter and Forest Floor. Link
Daws of Darkness: The Lost Village and its mini-expansion are now available at itch.io. The thick line art style of these co-op games really makes them stand out. Link
Epic Endeavor Games (Jason Greeno): The independent games by JG can be found on his Patreon page. Link.
Grimscribe: If you are looking for the year-long Grimlore series, you can find those here. Publisher Website. PNP Stash.
Jack Neal Games: Jack’s games about power, value, and systems (Rust and Revenue and Charters: Profit Through Public Works) are now available at JackNealGames.com. Link.
Jason Greeno / Epic Endeavor Games: Jason hosts his collection of games like Night Class (superhero roll and write) and The Cursed Menagerie (haunted cards and dice) at his new Itch.io page. Link.
Kealf Games: The new location for all things from Kelvin Soong of Kealf Games. PNP Stash Link.
Mark Tuck: Mark has brought his collection of PNPs (from the beloved Orchard to Pocket Aquarium, and many more) to the Game Crafter. Link.
Nathan Meunier: Featuring many of his games in both physical and PNP, you can now grab Doom Machine, Mindbenders, Hot Garbage and more at doomthoughts.com. Link.
PNP Arcade Publishing: For everything Dungeon Pages (and more to come) check out the PNP Arcade page at Itch.io. Link
Shiny Pigeon Games: PNP Arcade previously hosted Around The World In 15 Minutes, but at their site you can pick up Starfront Scouting Academy and the Packing Party series of games. Link.
We Heart Games: The Itch store for Mike Berg’s games (Crownfell, Exobase, Exoship) has the entire catalog of games. Link.

Would you like to submit a PNP Game?

With the help of publishers, designers and the community we will continue to share PNPs with all of you.

Click this link to submit information about a game

Don’t miss the weekly print and play games and news.

Games featured in these posts are not sponsored.

PNP Friday for June 19, 2026 - What I love About Underboss. Plus PNP news.

Fri, 19 Jun 2026 13:57:27 GMT

Welcome to Print & Play Friday! It’s June 19th and we’ve got a fresh batch of print and play news and games for your reading (and playing) pleasure.

Main Feature: What I Love About Underboss
New Games This Week
Community Spotlight: The Best Little Known Print And Play RPG’s From DriveThruRPG
Crowdfunding News (PNP Previews & Campaigns)
Where Are They Now?

What I Love About Underboss (Dungeon Pages)

JASON GREENO // JUNE 19, 2026

This week I thought I’d play a game that Jason Tagmire and I designed under our publishing hat—PNP Arcade Publishing—Dungeon Pages: Underboss. The reason for sharing this game now is twofold: It’s a good opportunity to mention that this is an all-new standalone game in the Dungeon Pages universe, so you don’t have to know how to play the original game to play this latest offering.

Second, there is SO much content in our yearly release games that it’s fun to recap now that we have released half a year’s worth of evil bosses for you to play!

What is the goal of Underboss?

In this game you take on the role of an evil boss (specifically one of the evil lords that were featured in our original game from 2023—Dungeon Pages). Here you find yourself minding your own business, building a doomsday plot, when pesky heroes invade your dungeon. So now, you’ll have to drop your plans and deal with these intruders.

One of the aspects of Underboss I’m most proud of is how many strategies are possible when you play a game. Will you choose boss abilities that deal damage fast or deploy monsters to swarm the heroes while you secretly plot in the shadows? Or will you build traps throughout your dungeon to strike at unsuspecting heroes? Of course, the fun is in finding the combos and synergies between all three of these paths. Each choice has advantages and drawbacks and this creates a feeling of pride when your plan works and a desire to try something new if you were defeated.

The game has three end game triggers: Boss slays all heroes, heroes slay the boss or at least one hero escapes. If a hero escapes after playing three dungeons then you check the final score based on heroes defeated and treasure robbed from your domain.

Heroes are a pain in the assets.

Heroes score points by stealing your treasure. Each time they land in a row or column that contains a new item, you circle that on their mini character card. If they survive the third dungeon they will score an escalating amount of points based on which items they grabbed. BUT if you can slay them before then you get to recoup those items AND score for dealing a death blow.

Evil Dice, Good Dice and Underlings

The cost of doing business is high and you’ll be trying to squeeze every bit of juice out of your evil dice each turn to generate monsters, traps and powers. One way to enhance each turn is by seeding your early dungeons with a bunch of underlings. These weak guards are useful in their ability to be sacrificed, which boosts an evil die.

The good die tells you which hero enters / moves through the dungeon. Unfortunately for you that’s only the start of the hero trouble. Each hero has an ability and attack that automatically triggers when they are activated. You’ll want to drop your assets in certain spaces to force heroes into rows and columns where you can attack them. This puzzle is part of the fun and it creates a very satisfying turn when an unwitting hero drops into your trap space which is surrounded by monsters or boss spells.

The Battle Grid

Seems like a lot of our games like to have ‘battle grids’. In Underboss, the battle grid is a small section of the page with a big impact. This grid is updated at the start of each new dungeon before you roll the dice. You’ll spend crystals (shown on the top of each dungeon) to purchase boss abilities (and place the corresponding letter(s) in the grid). This grid is drawn (just the outer shape) on your current dungeon to show your boss position within the dungeon. You’ll place a star on the dungeon space to show where the boss is standing exactly. This step is tricky because you’re both putting yourself at risk if you are too close to the heroes entry point (the door) but also proximity is important for dealing damage/using effects.

Advancing the Path

I’ve mentioned that there are three dungeons but not how you progress from one to the next. The answer lies in the highlighted path (in green). When all of these spaces are filled in you move on to the next dungeon (or final scoring if already in dungeon 3). While heroes enter and move randomly in the dungeon, there are two other ways that the green path gets filled. The first is whenever the Good Die results in a six. This creates a little breather turn for you (as the heroes do not activate) but you still must mark a green space with an ‘X’. The second way that the path gets filled in is when the Leader hero (the one in the first position) gets activated, triggering the special ‘Advance’ effect. This creates a tension where you can’t always count on the current dungeon lasting until all spaces are filled in!

A Buffet of Baddies

I mentioned earlier that we have a ton of releases—one a week for the entirety of 2026! This has created a need for lots of unique playstyles. For example:

The Magistrate uses corruption to plague the heroes, first increasing his evil dice, then dealing damage when those dice max out.
The Maestro forces heroes to dance with his enchanting music causing them to crash into their surroundings and taking damage as a result.
The Corrupt Vampire likes to sacrifice her Underlings for extra benefits (like blood burst attacks!).
Gareth the Trapper hunts the heroes by laying traps better than any other boss in the game. Comboing with status effects like Fear allows Gareth to corner his prey.
Vilsa LaPree (a gorgon) stuns heroes with her gaze while her ambushing gargoyles move in for the kill!

With over 30 released bosses so far the possibilities continue to multiply. And of course, like all games in the ‘Pages’ series you can cut and swap parts of the sheets to play your favorite boss against new heroes and within different dungeon sets.

Ready to embrace your inner evil?

You can find both the Core Set and Year-long versions of Underboss on our Itch page here. Note the Year-long product will get you everything we’ve released so far AND then you’ll receive weekly updates for the rest of the year.

For a limited time, get Underboss for 25% off »

Each week we share the new releases in the world of Print and Play. Here’s what’s new this week:

Dungeon Pages: Underboss - Frozen Spider: The year-long set has been updated with the newest boss and dungeon. Dealing damage from a giant spider is to be expected, right? But how about also freezing the heroes in their tracks? Sound fun? Then you want to check out the latest boss release. Hurry, Underboss year-long adventure is currently 25% off for a limited time! Link.

Publishers / designers submit your new PNP releases here: PNP Arcade Submission Form.

The Best Little Known Print And Play RPG’s From DriveThruRPG

Rob’s Tabletop World goes through a whole bunch of role playing PNPs at DriveThruRPG and discusses everything from the old school style of A Torch In The Dark to the best selling Wild West game The Drifter. Check it out.

Here’s what’s going on in the world of PNP Crowdfunding.

Button Shy has moved their DIE Ball campaign from Gamefound over to Kickstarter. The original plan was to use Gamefound for the new modular games, but since the physical games are US only, Kickstarter made more sense. The tiny PNP is available worldwide and it’s launching next Tuesday. DIE Ball is a modular fantasy sport battle game by Button Shy 2 Players (solo mode available!). 60 minutes. Just 9 cards per team, plus free mascot cards for backers! Link.

Hidden Realms: The Mummy’s Tomb is a single-page, Print & Play, Roll & Write dungeon crawl inspired by classic D&D maps. Draw polyomino shapes to map a new dungeon every game. Uncover treasure in the form of coins, keys, and magic items. Face deadly guardians, like oozes, skeletons, zombies, golems, mimics, and the Mummy itself. Plan carefully, because defeating it is not for the faint of heart. Are you up for the challenge? Link.

Trial by Fire is a Print & Play Roguelike game on Kickstarter now for $8. Use only a pen and the provided quest sheets to explore dozens of deadly dungeons. The game features 72 carefully crafted quests, divided into 3 compact books of 24 quests each, small enough to fit in your pocket. Play as a barbarian, thief or wizard, each with their own ability and inventory starting value. Choose wisely, your choice will affect the game difficulty. Link.

In 7 To Midnight, a cooperative, cute horror set collection game you will rescue critters lured into a maze by Zumoffa, Lord of Night, before he eats them all. Sounds dark, but is presented in a lighter visual tone than you’d expect from that last sentence. On Kickstarter for $4 for the base game and $6 for the expanded game. Link.

Submit your PNP crowdfunding projects here:
PNP Arcade Submission Form.

Are you looking for your favorite publishers from PNP Arcade? Check out this list.

Alexander Shen: If you’ve never played Quests Over Coffee or any of Alexander’s other fun games, be sure to check out his stuff on Itch.io. Link.
Button Shy Games: With hundreds of games on PNP Button Shy started uploading games on Itch.io and The Game Crafter. Expect regular releases of the older library of games as well as new content to come. Itch.io Link. The Game Crafter Link.
Cezar Capacle: Brazilian game designer, graphic designer, architect and musician. He’s been creating unique games for the past five years, on a variety of genres. Link
Clearly Sharp: Home page for Daniel Young, the designer of Gem Getter and Forest Floor. Link
Daws of Darkness: The Lost Village and its mini-expansion are now available at itch.io. The thick line art style of these co-op games really makes them stand out. Link
Epic Endeavor Games (Jason Greeno): The independent games by JG can be found on his Patreon page. Link.
Grimscribe: If you are looking for the year-long Grimlore series, you can find those here. Publisher Website. PNP Stash.
Jack Neal Games: Jack’s games about power, value, and systems (Rust and Revenue and Charters: Profit Through Public Works) are now available at JackNealGames.com. Link.
Jason Greeno / Epic Endeavor Games: Jason hosts his collection of games like Night Class (superhero roll and write) and The Cursed Menagerie (haunted cards and dice) at his new Itch.io page. Link.
Kealf Games: The new location for all things from Kelvin Soong of Kealf Games. PNP Stash Link.
Mark Tuck: Mark has brought his collection of PNPs (from the beloved Orchard to Pocket Aquarium, and many more) to the Game Crafter. Link.
Nathan Meunier: Featuring many of his games in both physical and PNP, you can now grab Doom Machine, Mindbenders, Hot Garbage and more at doomthoughts.com. Link.
PNP Arcade Publishing: For everything Dungeon Pages (and more to come) check out the PNP Arcade page at Itch.io. Link
Shiny Pigeon Games: PNP Arcade previously hosted Around The World In 15 Minutes, but at their site you can pick up Starfront Scouting Academy and the Packing Party series of games. Link.
We Heart Games: The Itch store for Mike Berg’s games (Crownfell, Exobase, Exoship) has the entire catalog of games. Link.

Would you like to submit a PNP Game?

With the help of publishers, designers and the community we will continue to share PNPs with all of you.

Click this link to submit information about a game

Don’t miss the weekly print and play games and news.

Games featured in these posts are not sponsored.

PNP Friday for June 12, 2026 - Q&A with Designer Joe Klipfel. Plus PNP news.

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 13:11:06 GMT

Welcome to Print & Play Friday! It’s June 12th and we’ve got a fresh batch of print and play news and games for your reading (and playing) pleasure.

Main Feature: Q&A With Designer Joe Klipfel
New Games This Week
Community Spotlight: Craft Tutorial: Making Lasting PNP Copies
Crowdfunding News (PNP Previews & Campaigns)
Where Are They Now?

Q&A with Designer Joe Klipfel

JASON TAGMIRE // JUNE 12, 2026

We continue our PNP-folk Q&A series today with Joe Klipfel, designer of many of your favorite small, in-hand games (Dragons of Etchinstone), as well as smaller adaptations of larger games (Gloomholdin’ for example). I’ve had the opportunity to work with Joe recently on his game The Rise Of A Jarl, so I’ve seen a little bit of what makes him tick, but I wanted to interview him so all of you can see that side as well.

Let’s ask Joe some questions!

1) Which 3 games would you say were most inspiring to you as a designer at the time that you started designing games?

Early on, it would have been Star Wars: Destiny, Set a Watch, and Delve: The Dice Game.

I got into hobby games around 2017, when a friend introduced me to Star Wars: Destiny. I think the deck construction aspect helped give me the game design bug.

Outside of Star Wars: Destiny, I think my first hobby game purchases were Button Shy’s Liberation (which sadly I could not play solo) and Set a Watch. Set a Watch was the driving inspiration for my first published design, The Hand of Destiny.

Delve: The Dice Game helped me get rolling (ha) by inspiring the design of Roll Crawl, a light Yahtzee-style push-your-luck adventure game. This was my first self-published game.

My more lasting influences came shortly after that initial wave, though. You can probably still see the influences from Gloomhaven, Mistfall and Mage Knight in even my more recent games.

2) What is your favorite part of the original design of Gloomholdin’?

So much about that design was fun. Probably the best individual moment was when I figured out how to make the hex-based movement work in-hand. Seeing that come together was really exciting.

Aside from that, I think my favorite part of the process was mapping out the scenarios. I only had so many cards I could use as maps, so it was fun to puzzle out ways to get the most out of those maps and create alternate endings so the campaign could be more replayable.

3) What is something interesting that was cut from one of your games?

When we were working on developing the new content for Dragons of Etchinstone, there were a few ideas bouncing around in addition to the expansion that ended up being published (Siege). I was messing around with designing two other possible expansions. One was adding a campaign mode, and the other was a way to modularly include side quests. In the end, I wasn’t able to get either of those sets to work how I wanted them to, so we abandoned them and I focused solely on making Siege as good as I could manage. I’m really happy we did that, because I think Siege turned out great.

4) What is your prototyping process? Are you cutting and printing? Using digital tools?

I love using TTS but it makes me dizzy if I use it for very long, so I do physical prototyping as soon and as often as I can. But TTS is fantastic for early prototypes, especially for bigger games. Most of my playtesting and iteration happened on TTS for my two bigger games, Radiance and Rome: Fate of an Empire. For smaller games, I tend to go directly to physical prototypes.

For physical prototypes I…

Duplex print on card/cover stock paper

Laminate with matte pouches (run it through twice!)
Cut with a guillotine cutter and round the corners with a Kodamaru Pro
Then run the cards through the laminator twice more! To make sure it doesn’t peel.

I find that process goes pretty fast and makes a great-looking prototype, in case I want to use it for a video or photos.

5) Tell us about a great game store you’ve visited. What is special about it?

There’s a small town in South Dakota, near-ish where I grew up, called Big Stone City. A friend of mine lives there and showed me the coolest thing when I was visiting. There’s a hardware store that has a single aisle filled with maybe the best curated selection of modern board games I’ve ever seen. The rest of the place is just a standard hardware store, and randomly you have an aisle filled with Through the Ages, Scythe, Brass: Birmingham and all the rest.

6) What is a game theme that you’d love to design for?

High fantasy and ancient Rome are my favorite themes, and I have gotten to work to my heart’s content in those settings, so I consider myself pretty lucky. If we’re talking IPs, The Lord of the Rings would easily be at the top of my list, and I’m not even sure there’s a close second. Very few designers ever get to work on LOTR stuff so I’m not expecting that to ever happen, but you never know. In the meantime, I’ve been lucky to get to work in fantasy settings I find really interesting and that borrow ideas from Tolkien’s world.

7) Where do you struggle the most as a designer?

Imposter syndrome is still occasionally a thing for me. It has gotten easier with every game, but I still sometimes sit back and wonder if I will be able to do anything interesting with my next design. I think the best solution is to simply do less sitting back and wondering. But I can also look back at past projects and put the data in my head that I somehow made it work for those, so I should be able to do a good job with whatever I’m working on at the moment.

Over time, you also learn to start taking the pressure off yourself, knowing that not every game you design is going to be the best game you’ve ever designed, and that is ok. You just do the best you can on every project and hopefully the game finds its audience.

8) What was the last game that really wowed you?

I recently discovered a dead CCG from the 90’s called Middle-Earth. It came out just a couple of years after Magic: The Gathering, and you can tell it was designed in the wild west days of card games, before so many norms of the genre were established.

Middle-Earth does so many weird things. Mechanisms that, if the game were released today, would feel either creaky or innovative, depending on how you wanted to look at it.

It’s essentially an open-world game, not too dissimilar from how Earthborne Rangers handles its open world. Except there are no scripted quest lines that provide guided incentives to move around. Instead, the cards in your deck do this. Characters can only be played at their home location. You can only play major items at certain locations. You can only recruit factions at their home site. And the crazy thing is, you construct your deck ahead of time. So the game is like a big storytelling sandbox, but you bring the tools you want into the game. You decide what story beats to include in your deck, but you have no idea the order the cards will come out, so you have to pivot to tell the story the way the deck is telling you it needs to be played this game.

There are other things, too, like the fact that you bring a sideboard, and can do things to things to add sideboard cards into your deck during the game. Or how there is no resource economy. You can just…play cards, if you meet the requirements printed on the card.

The game is fiddly and definitely feels dated, but it still feels like an exciting and fresh take on handling an open world in board games. It feels like we’re in a bit of an open-world renaissance right now (I’m calling it now…open world is the new trick taking), with stuff like Earthborne Rangers, Sleeping Gods and Vantage. So I’m excited to see if any new open-world games will be able to surprise me in the next few years as much as Middle-Earth managed to.

Thanks everyone for reading along! Keep an eye out for more from Joe Klipfel!

Each week we share the new releases in the world of Print and Play. Here’s what’s new this week:

Dungeon Pages: Underboss - Corrupt Vampire: The year-long set has been updated with the newest boss and dungeon. What’s an underling good for if you can’t use dark vampiric magic to transform the minion into a weapon? You’ll be bursting with excitement when you get your eyes on this week’s boss ability! Link.

Publishers / designers submit your new PNP releases here: PNP Arcade Submission Form.

You gotta love a creator who illustrates their own games with unique style and skill. Enter, Die in a Dungeon, a solo or cooperative, narrative dungeon-crawler, created by ROLLINKUNZ.

In tgis game, your polyhedral dice become doomed adventurers attempting to save and rebuild a village that sits on the edge of a labyrinthine, ever-changing dungeon!

Grab your copy of Die in a Dungeon or one of ROLLINKUNZ other epic-ly illustrated other games here.

Craft Tutorial: Making Lasting Copies

Kimberly Tolson of Tabletop Tolson always has something great to share from her YouTube channel, but this latest tutorial is a little different. Instead of a game, in this video, Kimberly is sharing her contact paper trick for preserving print and play games (like roll & writes) that might normally get thrown away after one use.

Here are a few PNP-related crowdfunding campaigns that we thought you might find interesting:

Inspired by games like 7th Continent, Robinson Crusoe and the video game The Long Dark, Bravery wants to test your survival skills. In this tense, scenario-based adventure game you’ll need to carefully plan if your going to make it out of the wilderness alive! Decisions include maximizing day and night cycles while dodging wolves and bears! Your limited resources must be managed as well if you’re going to survive Bravery!

Check out the campaign at Kickstarter.

A new twist on trick taking, Courage and Cunning is a dungeon-themed, competitive game of loot-snatching. It also offers a story mode that promises to expand the adventure. Looking to add some heroic powers? Just add the included adventurer cards to give each player a unique rule-bending power.

Check out the campaign at Kickstarter.

Submit your PNP crowdfunding projects here:
PNP Arcade Submission Form.

Are you looking for your favorite publishers from PNP Arcade? Check out this list.

Alexander Shen: If you’ve never played Quests Over Coffee or any of Alexander’s other fun games, be sure to check out his stuff on Itch.io. Link.
Button Shy Games: With hundreds of games on PNP Button Shy started uploading games on Itch.io and The Game Crafter. Expect regular releases of the older library of games as well as new content to come. Itch.io Link. The Game Crafter Link.
Cezar Capacle: Brazilian game designer, graphic designer, architect and musician. He’s been creating unique games for the past five years, on a variety of genres. Link
Clearly Sharp: Home page for Daniel Young, the designer of Gem Getter and Forest Floor. Link
Daws of Darkness: The Lost Village and its mini-expansion are now available at itch.io. The thick line art style of these co-op games really makes them stand out. Link
Epic Endeavor Games (Jason Greeno): The independent games by JG can be found on his Patreon page. Link.
Grimscribe: If you are looking for the year-long Grimlore series, you can find those here. Publisher Website. PNP Stash.
Jack Neal Games: Jack’s games about power, value, and systems (Rust and Revenue and Charters: Profit Through Public Works) are now available at JackNealGames.com. Link.
Jason Greeno / Epic Endeavor Games: Jason hosts his collection of games like Night Class (superhero roll and write) and The Cursed Menagerie (haunted cards and dice) at his new Itch.io page. Link.
Kealf Games: The new location for all things from Kelvin Soong of Kealf Games. PNP Stash Link.
Mark Tuck: Mark has brought his collection of PNPs (from the beloved Orchard to Pocket Aquarium, and many more) to the Game Crafter. Link.
Nathan Meunier: Featuring many of his games in both physical and PNP, you can now grab Doom Machine, Mindbenders, Hot Garbage and more at doomthoughts.com. Link.
PNP Arcade Publishing: For everything Dungeon Pages (and more to come) check out the PNP Arcade page at Itch.io. Link
Shiny Pigeon Games: PNP Arcade previously hosted Around The World In 15 Minutes, but at their site you can pick up Starfront Scouting Academy and the Packing Party series of games. Link.
We Heart Games: The Itch store for Mike Berg’s games (Crownfell, Exobase, Exoship) has the entire catalog of games. Link.

Would you like to submit a PNP Game?

With the help of publishers, designers and the community we will continue to share PNPs with all of you.

Click this link to submit information about a game

Don’t miss the weekly print and play games and news.

Games featured in these posts are not sponsored.

PNP Friday for June 5, 2026 - What I love about 12 Years from Max Moon Games. Plus PNP news.

Fri, 05 Jun 2026 13:07:07 GMT

Welcome to Print & Play Friday! It’s June 5th and we’ve got a fresh batch of print and play news and games for your reading (and playing) pleasure.

Main Feature: What I love about 12 Years from Max Moon Games
New Games This Week
Community Spotlight: Veselko Kelava shares Some Long/Epic Free PnP Games
Crowdfunding News (PNP Previews & Campaigns)
Where Are They Now?

What I love about Twelve Years from Max Moon Games

JASON GREENO // JUNE 5, 2026

About once a year I get the itch to play a dungeon crawl game. Sometimes, more rarely, I’ll play a roleplaying game. But usually I seek out a boardgame that simulates RPGs and can be played in a shorter time. The ideal scenario is when that boardgame doesn’t require a lot of setup or teardown. This is how I stumbled on Twelve Years — a solo (or multiplayer) roleplaying game that’s easy to get to the table and quickly scratches the itch of adventuring.

If you’ve ever played Dungeons & Dragons or a similar game, you more than likely have run into the problem of either lacking players, a gamemaster or time to actually play the game. What’s great about games like Twelve Years or Four Against Darkness is that you don’t need a Game Master or even fellow players.

Find the crown and bring it to the Lich King—what could possibly go wrong?

In Twelve Years you are challenged with saving the world from the Lich King. It turns out that the prophecy requires you to return a magical crown to the aforementioned undead ruler, otherwise his army will rise and humanity will fall. You accomplish this daunting task by crossing the kingdom (hex map) and acquiring loot in underground dungeons (grid map).

The game files come with all the printable hex maps and grid maps you’ll need to dive in.

Getting it to the Table

Right away you get to the fun part (or at least I think so) of generating your hero party. In this game though, you might be surprised to hear that there are only four hero archetypes (expansions offer more) which are not your typical heroes: Faeries, Hermits, Rogues and Giants make up the pool of random party members. You are then equipped with random weapons and loot. Then it’s off to exploring!

I rolled up two Faeries, that I decided must be siblings. Faisa and her brother Fozo.

A magic portal led me to the mouth of a dungeon. Unfortunately it was guarded by a giant AND a banshee!?!

Hexploring

By rolling on tables you will reveal random terrain and encounters that will shape your overland adventure towards the Lich’s Castle. But the underlying message in the rules is that you might not want to rush to the castle too quickly, otherwise your heroes won’t have leveled up sufficiently or geared up enough to be a threat.

The Good, The Bad, and The Holy Crap

I’ve played Four Against Darkness and the comparison I would make here is that 4AD is best suited for players seeking more crunch and complexity at the cost of more rulebook referencing during gameplay. There’s more combat planning and resolution mechanics in 4AD but again at the cost of playtime.

With Twelve Years I was playing after 10 minutes and rarely had to re-check the rules. The trade-off here is that some rules are not clarified and there are no examples of gameplay so you sort of have to fudge things with fun in mind.

Combat is Quick

In Twelve Years all combat (heroes and monsters) is resolved in a single roll. Sometimes you’ll both take damage while other times only one side takes a beating. Your heroes weapons will matter, but if you don’t roll a HIT, then you’re out of luck. This system makes battles fly by quickly so you can scavenge for loot!

Ouch. It takes a Village.

This game is best approached from the mindset of a player expecting to envision stories befalling their heroes, and not getting too attached to those characters. The good news is that even when your party dies, you can note where they fell and send your next party to grab their fallen comrade’s loot! In this way, the game is more of a an ongoing adventure and not a solitary tale of one party.

This game has a lot of deadly enemies that will wipe your party with a few bad rolls. Zombies for example can bite you once, and turn that hero into an enemy. Cyclops cannot be attacked without befalling a curse (which KILLS the attacker in the following year of play). Traps can deal one-shot kills if you’re unprepared.

Things did not exactly go well for the party. Between the Curse of the Cyclops and the Zombie infection, Garth the Giant, the last survivor, had few options but to delve deeper for a cure.

Final Thoughts

I had fun imagining the stories unfolding around Faisa and Fozo, Harklin the Hermit and Garth the Giant. Their adventure came to a deadly end, but their story lives on! I’m curious what the next adventuring party might stumble upon as they seek out the fate of their fallen heroes. Can they succeed where this first party failed? Or will the Lich King’s wrath bring the world to darkness when year twelve arrives?

Where to buy the game

Max Moon Games website offers the base game as well as expansions for more variety. You can grab them here.

Each week we share the new releases in the world of Print and Play. Here’s what’s new this week:

Dungeon Pages: Underboss - Ruinous Statue: The year-long set has been updated with the newest boss and dungeon. The Ruinous Statue sneaks up on the heroes with Ambush. The ability reduces Good Dice and then punishes heroes who end up in your crushing grasp. Link.

Publishers / designers submit your new PNP releases here: PNP Arcade Submission Form.

Veselko Kelava shares Some Long/Epic Free PnP Games

If you’re home this weekend and looking to keep yourself super busy (with playing games, instead of crafting them), check out this video from Veselko Kelava looking at some longer PNP games. The video includes: D100 Dungeon, Pocket Civ, Epic Solitaire Notebook Adventure, and Banzuke Shoushin along with links for each in the description.

Here are a few PNP-related crowdfunding campaigns that we thought you might find interesting:

Flock and Squabble is a fast moving, family friendly card game where players slam their seagulls onto a table piled with rubbish. The player who swoops with the most seagulls, wins the pile.

2-4 players with a discounted add-on PNP of Hieroglyph Historian for $10, discounted from $13 for this release. Link.

Trial by Fire is a print & play Roguelike Dungeon-Crawling game for 1 to 99 players. You only need a pen and a quest sheet to play. You must explore a deadly dungeon, battling monsters, collecting treasures, and survive until you reach the exit.

At the start of the campaign, the game features 72 carefully crafted quests, divided into 3 compact books of 24 quests each, small enough to fit in your pocket! Link.

Any PNPers into 3D printing as well?

Kaiju Capers is a fast, family-friendly tabletop game where 2–4 players take control of giant monsters battling across a destructible city. Tear through districts, build up radiation, and unleash powerful abilities—but push too far and your kaiju risks catastrophic overload.

Includes all 15 Kaiju STLs, printable character cards in PDF format, the full game mat PDFs, complete rulebook, and token STLs — everything you need to print, build, and start smashing cities straight away. Link.

Submit your PNP crowdfunding projects here:
PNP Arcade Submission Form.

Are you looking for your favorite publishers from PNP Arcade? Check out this list.

Alexander Shen: If you’ve never played Quests Over Coffee or any of Alexander’s other fun games, be sure to check out his stuff on Itch.io. Link.
Button Shy Games: With hundreds of games on PNP Button Shy started uploading games on Itch.io and The Game Crafter. Expect regular releases of the older library of games as well as new content to come. Itch.io Link. The Game Crafter Link.
Cezar Capacle: Brazilian game designer, graphic designer, architect and musician. He’s been creating unique games for the past five years, on a variety of genres. Link
Clearly Sharp: Home page for Daniel Young, the designer of Gem Getter and Forest Floor. Link
Daws of Darkness: The Lost Village and its mini-expansion are now available at itch.io. The thick line art style of these co-op games really makes them stand out. Link
Epic Endeavor Games (Jason Greeno): The independent games by JG can be found on his Patreon page. Link.
Grimscribe: If you are looking for the year-long Grimlore series, you can find those here. Publisher Website. PNP Stash.
Jack Neal Games: Jack’s games about power, value, and systems (Rust and Revenue and Charters: Profit Through Public Works) are now available at JackNealGames.com. Link.
Jason Greeno / Epic Endeavor Games: Jason hosts his collection of games like Night Class (superhero roll and write) and The Cursed Menagerie (haunted cards and dice) at his new Itch.io page. Link.
Kealf Games: The new location for all things from Kelvin Soong of Kealf Games. PNP Stash Link.
Mark Tuck: Mark has brought his collection of PNPs (from the beloved Orchard to Pocket Aquarium, and many more) to the Game Crafter. Link.
Nathan Meunier: Featuring many of his games in both physical and PNP, you can now grab Doom Machine, Mindbenders, Hot Garbage and more at doomthoughts.com. Link.
PNP Arcade Publishing: For everything Dungeon Pages (and more to come) check out the PNP Arcade page at Itch.io. Link
Shiny Pigeon Games: PNP Arcade previously hosted Around The World In 15 Minutes, but at their site you can pick up Starfront Scouting Academy and the Packing Party series of games. Link.
We Heart Games: The Itch store for Mike Berg’s games (Crownfell, Exobase, Exoship) has the entire catalog of games. Link.

Would you like to submit a PNP Game?

With the help of publishers, designers and the community we will continue to share PNPs with all of you.

Click this link to submit information about a game

Don’t miss the weekly print and play games and news.

Games featured in these posts are not sponsored.

PNP Friday for May 29, 2026 - The ABC's of PNP: Part 1. Plus PNP news.

Fri, 29 May 2026 13:06:03 GMT

Welcome to Print & Play Friday! It’s May 29th and we’ve got a fresh batch of print and play news and games for your reading (and playing) pleasure.

Main Feature: The ABC’s of PNP - Part 1: ABCDE
New Games This Week
Community Spotlight: Print & Play Craft Tutorial
Crowdfunding News (PNP Previews & Campaigns)
Where Are They Now?

The ABC’s of PNP: Part 1 ABCDE

JASON TAGMIRE // MAY 29, 2026

We wanted to take a moment and highlight some of the best of the best in print and play. These are all games that stood the test of time, and ultimately have risen to the top of the BoardGameGeek rankings.

Now everyone may not agree with these as the top games (as they are based on public ratings) but they do often represent the general response to the game, and as a publisher I can confirm that sales numbers go pretty hand in hand with BGG rankings. Also, to work your way up the rankings at BGG you need a few things: high rating numbers, and a large number of ratings. So a 7.5 game with 30 ratings will rank way lower than a 7.5 game with 200 ratings.

So let’s look at what we are calling the ABC’s of PNPs.

These are the top ranked game for each letter of the alphabet with one big exception - a PNP must be currently available in an official capacity. There are many games tagged as PNP because they had a PNP at some point, but for some it’s been many, many years since a PNP was available. We wanted to make sure this was a current list, at least as of the date of this posting.

Onto the games!

A is for Agropolis

Rank: 1434
PNP Game Rank: 35

From clucking chickens to rumbling tractors, the sounds of a bustling farm are everywhere. It’s up to your team of planners to turn this little farm into a flourishing ranching community! Having developed dream cities in Sprawlopolis, it’s now time to set your sights on the rolling countryside, where farm, ranches, and roads intermingle master plan, as ever, seems just out of reach.

Agropolis is a stand-alone expansion to Sprawlopolis, bringing the same card-laying, variable-scoring gameplay into a new setting: city blocks give way to orchards, wheat fields, livestock pens, and vineyards. As before, players draw three goal cards and then attempt to place cards one at a time to create a rural tableau that best satisfies those goals. New gameplay features help offset overly-powerful scoring combos and layer additional attributes onto certain types of terrain, providing even greater depth of gameplay without sacrificing the original’s signature elegance.

Agropolis can be played entirely on its own, but it can also combined with Sprawlopolis using special rules and goal cards provided in the Combopolis mini-expansion.

Link: https://buttonshygames.itch.io/agropolis

B is for Black Sonata

Rank: 962
PNP Game Rank: 18

For more than four centuries scholars have argued over the identity of the mysterious Dark Lady of William Shakespeare’s sonnets. According to the sonnets, the Dark Lady seduced the poet and held him in an agonised thrall while also conducting an affair with the Fair Youth whom Shakespeare also loved.

In Black Sonata you will find yourself in Shakespeare’s London, circa 1600, in pursuit of the shadowy Lady. A specially ordered deck of cards determines her hidden movements from place to place. You must deduce her location and then intercept her to catch a glimpse and gain a clue to her identity. You will need several clues to deduce her identity, but with each clue gained the Lady becomes harder to track. Black Sonata combines hidden movement and logical deduction into a unique solitaire steeped in literary history.

Can you finally solve English literature’s greatest mystery? Or will the Dark Lady elude you, melting from your grasp like a curl of smoke and promises?

Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/151526/black-sonata-pnp-components

C is for Circle The Wagons

Rank: 1420
PNP Game Rank: 33

Each player in Circle the Wagons is fixin’ to build up their own boomtown, but only one’ll build the best in the West!

Blaze a trail by draftin’ cards ‘round the circle and placin’ ‘em in yer town, tryin’ to connect matchin’ territories to score prosperity points! But don’t forget about them three bonus cards in the center of the circle that can score ya even more points — that is, if ya play yer cards right. With over 800 unique ways to score and millions of draftin’ and placin’ combos, you’ll never build the same town twice!

Circle the Wagons is a 2-player map-building game designed by Steven Aramini (Yardmaster), Danny Devine (Ghosts Love Candy) and Paul Kluka; featuring the art of Beth Sobel (Herbaceous, World’s Fair 1893 and Lanterns) and logo design of Bryan Fischer (Chicken Caesar). Circle the Wagons is the winner of the 2016 Button Shy Wallet Design Contest, beating out over 70 other games.

Link: https://buttonshygames.itch.io/circle-the-wagons

D is for Distilled

Rank: 275
PNP Game Rank: 2

Distilled is a highly thematic strategy card game about crafting spirits in a distillery, with resource management and push-your-luck elements. In the game, you have inherited a distillery and are hoping to someday achieve the title of master distiller through purchasing goods, building up your distillery, and creating the world’s most renowned spirits.

Purchase new ingredients and invest in upgrades to your distillery, all while eventually distilling the spirit and sending it to the warehouse. Once in the warehouse, age your spirit to enhance its flavor and bottle it to sell it for major profits!

Achieve the title of Master Distiller by having the most spirit points at the end of the game. Points are obtained by distilling and selling spirits.

Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/224590/distilled-free-pnp

E is for Evolution

Rank: 781
PNP Game Rank: 14

In Evolution, players adapt their species in a dynamic ecosystem where food is scarce and predators lurk. Traits like Hard Shell and Horns will protect your species from Carnivores, while a Long Neck will help them get food that others cannot reach. With over 4,000 ways to evolve your species, every game becomes a different adventure.

Evolution is played in a variable number of rounds. Each round, players draw 3 Trait cards to enhance their species, create new species or feed their existing animals. Play continues until the Trait deck has been finished and needs to be reshuffled. Reshuffling the Trait cards signals the final round of the game. At the end of the game the player with the most food, traits, and population wins.

Evolution packs a surprising amount of variety for a game with simple rules. The variety comes from the synergies between the trait cards and from the different personalities at the table. Some players thrive on creating Carnivores to wreak havoc on their fellow players. Others prefer to stay protected and mind their own business. Evolution encourages both play styles by giving each of them multiple paths to victory. And it is the mix of play styles at the table that ultimately determines the ecosystem in which the players are adapting. So gather your friends and see who can best adapt to the changing world around them.

Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/102112/evolution-print-and-play-files-version-10

That’s just the beginning of our ABCs of PNPs but it should be enough top tier games to keep you busy for a while. We’ll keep working our way through the alphabet here!

Each week we share the new releases in the world of Print and Play. Here’s what’s new this week:

Dungeon Pages: Underboss - The Magistrate: The year-long set has been updated with the newest boss and dungeon. Corruption has spread to the dungeons of Underboss. Manipulate the heroes and rake in the fortunes! Link.

Publishers / designers submit your new PNP releases here: PNP Arcade Submission Form.

Print & Play CRAFT TUTORIAL (How to make lasting copies)

Many of you may be familiar with Tabletop Tolson’s Youtube game review channel. Kimberly has featured numerous print and play games. This week we’re sharing a video she created to help new crafters learn how to preserve their pnp games.

Here are a few PNP-related crowdfunding campaigns that we thought you might find interesting:

Shinobi Spy & Supply is a small card game about 2 competing shops that sell all the gear Fantasy Japanese spies need for espionage! However, when your clientele are Ninja, there’s literally spies around every corner. Will your shop be the most successful?

PNP files available for just $3. Link.

Mausworn is built on the foundations of two brilliant games—Mausritter (Isaac Williams) and Ironsworn (Shawn Tomkin)—blended with original mechanics and procedures into something entirely its own: a unique, standalone game of brave little mice traversing a land once occupied—and now abandoned—by humans.

You can follow the campaign here: Link.

Submit your PNP crowdfunding projects here:
PNP Arcade Submission Form.

Are you looking for your favorite publishers from PNP Arcade? Check out this list.

Alexander Shen: If you’ve never played Quests Over Coffee or any of Alexander’s other fun games, be sure to check out his stuff on Itch.io. Link.
Button Shy Games: With hundreds of games on PNP Button Shy started uploading games on Itch.io and The Game Crafter. Expect regular releases of the older library of games as well as new content to come. Itch.io Link. The Game Crafter Link.
Cezar Capacle: Brazilian game designer, graphic designer, architect and musician. He’s been creating unique games for the past five years, on a variety of genres. Link
Clearly Sharp: Home page for Daniel Young, the designer of Gem Getter and Forest Floor. Link
Daws of Darkness: The Lost Village and its mini-expansion are now available at itch.io. The thick line art style of these co-op games really makes them stand out. Link
Epic Endeavor Games (Jason Greeno): The independent games by JG can be found on his Patreon page. Link.
Grimscribe: If you are looking for the year-long Grimlore series, you can find those here. Publisher Website. PNP Stash.
Jack Neal Games: Jack’s games about power, value, and systems (Rust and Revenue and Charters: Profit Through Public Works) are now available at JackNealGames.com. Link.
Jason Greeno / Epic Endeavor Games: Jason hosts his collection of games like Night Class (superhero roll and write) and The Cursed Menagerie (haunted cards and dice) at his new Itch.io page. Link.
Kealf Games: The new location for all things from Kelvin Soong of Kealf Games. PNP Stash Link.
Mark Tuck: Mark has brought his collection of PNPs (from the beloved Orchard to Pocket Aquarium, and many more) to the Game Crafter. Link.
Nathan Meunier: Featuring many of his games in both physical and PNP, you can now grab Doom Machine, Mindbenders, Hot Garbage and more at doomthoughts.com. Link.
PNP Arcade Publishing: For everything Dungeon Pages (and more to come) check out the PNP Arcade page at Itch.io. Link
Shiny Pigeon Games: PNP Arcade previously hosted Around The World In 15 Minutes, but at their site you can pick up Starfront Scouting Academy and the Packing Party series of games. Link.
We Heart Games: The Itch store for Mike Berg’s games (Crownfell, Exobase, Exoship) has the entire catalog of games. Link.

Would you like to submit a PNP Game?

With the help of publishers, designers and the community we will continue to share PNPs with all of you.

Click this link to submit information about a game

Don’t miss the weekly print and play games and news.

Games featured in these posts are not sponsored.

PNP Friday for May 22, 2026 - What I love about Spies from No Box Games. Plus PNP news.

Fri, 22 May 2026 13:19:51 GMT

Welcome to Print & Play Friday! It’s May 22nd and we’ve got a fresh batch of print and play news and games for your reading (and playing) pleasure.

Main Feature: What I love about Spies from No Box Games
New Games This Week
Community Spotlight: r/printandplay
Crowdfunding News (PNP Previews & Campaigns)
Where Are They Now?

What I love about Spies from No Box Games

JASON GREENO // MAY 22, 2026

Setup

Setup is incredibly simple. This is one of those print-and-play games that only requires a few sheets of paper to jump right in. Each player needs a game sheet and, optionally, a player shield to prevent prying eyes from seeing where you’re marking on your map. The game also suggests using a token to track whose turn it is. We found that helpful for remembering who asks the first question each round, though it’s probably not essential.

A Quick Teach

Spies is super easy to learn. There are really only three or four core rules, and I’d imagine anyone ages 8 and up could play it comfortably. While the game is fairly abstract — objectives and sabotage are mostly about endgame scoring rather than dramatic moment-to-moment effects — it still does a surprisingly good job of making you feel like you’re in the middle of a cat-and-mouse game of hide-and-seek.

Because you’re targeting the player to your left while simultaneously being hunted by the player on your right, you could theoretically play with almost any number of players. I could even see this working really well in a classroom setting.

Turns happen simultaneously. First is the movement phase, where you draw a line from your current room to an adjacent room. If you choose to move two spaces, you can go one room farther instead.

Next, you’ll either:

circle the icon in the room to represent Completing an Objective, or
draw a square around the icon to represent Sabotaging that room.

This is a good point to explain the scoring. Each unique objective you complete is worth 1 point. However, every room that your opponent completed an Objective AND you sabotaged is worth a point to you (that you use to MULTIPLY your score!) So, if I complete two objectives for 2 points and successfully sabotage my opponent three times, my total score becomes 6 points.

During the Clue Phase you will choose one of the available questions to ask your target in hopes of narrowing down their location. Careful though—I found out the hard way that certain questions can pinpoint you aren’t careful!

Tracking Your Rival

Each player is trying to determine the location of the player on their left. This is the other major way to score points (by guessing your opponent’s final location at the end of the game). You’ll score 5 points if you correctly guess the exact room they’re in, or 3 points if you guess a room adjacent to their actual location.

And that’s really it. It’s a very straightforward, easy-to-learn game that creates some genuinely fun table talk, especially with larger groups.

You can grab your copy of Spies from No Box Games at PNP Hero. If you’ve played the game — or decide to try it soon — I’d love to hear what you think over on our Discord channel.

Each week we share the new releases in the world of Print and Play. Here’s what’s new this week:

Dungeon Pages: Underboss - Deadly Assassin: The year-long set has been updated with the newest boss and dungeon. Backstab is proving to be a fun boss ability but our playtesters also enjoyed the Trickster monster who also lets you place extra traps! Link.

Publishers / designers submit your new PNP releases here: PNP Arcade Submission Form.

A shoutout to r/printandplay

I feel like everyone should know this one already, but there’s a chance some of you haven’t come across it yet so I wanted to share. reddit.com/r/printandplay is a smaller, but active subreddit dedicated to the art of print and play games. There are regular posts there ranging from tips, to personal rethemes, to designers trying new things. If you’re into reddit, but not into it enough that you already know about this, check it out! Link.

Here are a few PNP-related crowdfunding campaigns that we thought you might find interesting:

This Fight Is Staged! is a cooperative duel of play fighting! Work together using limited information to sequence number cards correctly and impress the audience of face cards. The base game has a 7-stage campaign and a silly bonus stage, the expansion has several challenge modes, a new campaign, and 7 more bonus stages!

PNP files available for just $4. Link.

Submit your PNP crowdfunding projects here:
PNP Arcade Submission Form.

Are you looking for your favorite publishers from PNP Arcade? Check out this list.

Alexander Shen: If you’ve never played Quests Over Coffee or any of Alexander’s other fun games, be sure to check out his stuff on Itch.io. Link.
Button Shy Games: With hundreds of games on PNP Button Shy started uploading games on Itch.io and The Game Crafter. Expect regular releases of the older library of games as well as new content to come. Itch.io Link. The Game Crafter Link.
Cezar Capacle: Brazilian game designer, graphic designer, architect and musician. He’s been creating unique games for the past five years, on a variety of genres. Link
Clearly Sharp: Home page for Daniel Young, the designer of Gem Getter and Forest Floor. Link
Daws of Darkness: The Lost Village and its mini-expansion are now available at itch.io. The thick line art style of these co-op games really makes them stand out. Link
Epic Endeavor Games (Jason Greeno): The independent games by JG can be found on his Patreon page. Link.
Grimscribe: If you are looking for the year-long Grimlore series, you can find those here. Publisher Website. PNP Stash.
Jack Neal Games: Jack’s games about power, value, and systems (Rust and Revenue and Charters: Profit Through Public Works) are now available at JackNealGames.com. Link.
Jason Greeno / Epic Endeavor Games: Jason hosts his collection of games like Night Class (superhero roll and write) and The Cursed Menagerie (haunted cards and dice) at his new Itch.io page. Link.
Kealf Games: The new location for all things from Kelvin Soong of Kealf Games. PNP Stash Link.
Mark Tuck: Mark has brought his collection of PNPs (from the beloved Orchard to Pocket Aquarium, and many more) to the Game Crafter. Link.
Nathan Meunier: Featuring many of his games in both physical and PNP, you can now grab Doom Machine, Mindbenders, Hot Garbage and more at doomthoughts.com. Link.
PNP Arcade Publishing: For everything Dungeon Pages (and more to come) check out the PNP Arcade page at Itch.io. Link
Shiny Pigeon Games: PNP Arcade previously hosted Around The World In 15 Minutes, but at their site you can pick up Starfront Scouting Academy and the Packing Party series of games. Link.
We Heart Games: The Itch store for Mike Berg’s games (Crownfell, Exobase, Exoship) has the entire catalog of games. Link.

Would you like to submit a PNP Game?

With the help of publishers, designers and the community we will continue to share PNPs with all of you.

Click this link to submit information about a game

Don’t miss the weekly print and play games and news.

Games featured in these posts are not sponsored.

PNP Friday for May 15, 2026 - Board Game Geek's Golden Geek Print And Play Awards. Plus PNP news.

Fri, 15 May 2026 13:16:06 GMT

Welcome to Print & Play Friday! It’s May 15th and we’ve got a fresh batch of print and play news and games for your reading (and playing) pleasure.

Main Feature: Golden Geek Awards
New Games This Week
Community Spotlight: Martin’s Card Formatter
Crowdfunding News (PNP Previews & Campaigns)
Where Are They Now?

And The Golden Geek Award For Print And Play Goes To….

JASON TAGMIRE // MAY 15, 2026

This week was the reveal of Board Game Geek’s Golden Geek Awards for 2025, a celebration of many of the biggest games of last year. A few years ago they added a category for PNP games, which gives some great visibility to our little (but growing!) hobby. It’s great to see PNP get recognition in these larger spaces.

Congrats to the winning and runner-up games and their creators!

Print & Play
Winner: Dungeons of the Oak Dell
Runner-up: Rise of the Oak Dell
Runner-up: 52 Duels

Here’s the announcement video. Skip to 3:09 to see the PNP group.

Winner: Dungeons Of The Oak Dell

Designer: Przemysław Fornal, Michał Łopato
Artist: Roman Kucharski
Publisher: Two Acorns Games

Dungeons of the Oak Dell is a dungeon crawling roll & write game inspired by old-school PC classics such as Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder, and Grimrock.

Alongside rondel and dice drafting mechanics, determining how you will attack, how far you can delve into the dungeon, and what you will find, it also introduces an innovative and immersive fighting system, allowing players to almost feel every hit they deal to a monster. Each beast presents a different challenge, with unique skills and behaviors.

During the game, players will also level up their heroes and delve into different dungeons full of traps, locked doors, treasures, and other surprises. Their goal will be different depending on the current quest. The game will include a roguelite solo mode.

The bad news is that the game is currently unavailable, but the creators have setup some notification processes to get it once it is available again.

And while the timing is tough, I can relate to the struggles of running a business year round and the costs involved. Sometimes it’s just easier to keep things on pause.

Whatever you do, don’t miss this one when it comes back around.

Runner-Up: Rise Of The Oak Dell

Designer: Przemysław Fornal
Artist: Przemysław Fornal, Roman Kucharski
Publisher: Two Acorns Games

Rise of the Oak Dell is a strategic roll & write game in which the player takes on the role of a leader guiding a growing civilization in The Oak Dell. Rules will be translated into several languages, however the game itself is 100% language-independent.

Over the course of 13 rounds, they gather resources, develop technologies, explore new territories, and construct wonders of the world — monumental achievements that reflect the power of their people.

But progress comes at a cost: unexpected enemy attacks can disrupt plans, and an unhappy population may hinder development.

It’s really fascinating to see the same team with two titles taking two of the three top slots. But these two games couldn’t look more different. The strong cover art direction and detailed sheets shine through on both projects, but the vibes are so different.

Rise of the Oak Dell is also currently unavailable, but get on those email lists so you can get it once it’s out again!

Runner-Up: 52 Duels

Designer: Matthew Dunstan, Rory Muldoon
Artist: Rory Muldoon
Publisher: Postmark Games

52 Duels is a print and play duelling game set in the fantasy world of 52 Realms: Adventures. Using only a standard poker deck, you’ll launch attacks, block damage, use items, and level up your hero’s unique skills. Whittle down your opponent’s deck first to win, but be careful, they’ll have some tricks of their own up their sleeve.

With an ebb and flow similar to trading card games like Magic: The Gathering or Star Wars: Unlimited, 52 Duels offers an affordable, yet deep battling experience that will keep you coming back to the table to try new plays and strategies. Character skills and abilities are contained on one sheet of paper, and health is tracked by how many cards are left in your deck. There is no cutting or crafting required, and you’ll just need a couple of decks of playing cards to play the game.

While 52 Duels is soloable, it is a dueling game and it’s hard not to think of it as a first and foremost two player game. And I’m both proud and surprised to see a multiplayer game make the cut. PNP can often skew solo (sometimes it’s hard to get others to play your crafty little creations), but it’s great to see some multiplayer PNPs in those higher ranks.

You can pick up 52 Duels at the Postmark game site: Link

More Nominees

The remaining nominees are linked below.

Chronicles of Civilization
Crosswhords!
Elevation (fan expansion for Android: Netrunner)
The Promise
Terra Mystica: Fan Factions

Congrats to everyone on their nominations and wins this year!

Each week we share the new releases in the world of Print and Play. Here’s what’s new this week:

Dungeon Pages: Underboss - Stealing Troll: The year-long set has been updated with the newest boss and dungeon. Eloquent and no respect for people’s things—the Stealing Troll can lay the smack down while picking up the goods. Link.

Publishers / designers submit your new PNP releases here: PNP Arcade Submission Form.

Martin’s Card Formatter

If you’ve spent anytime in the print and play Facebook group space then you’ve undoubtedly come across Martin Gonzalvez’s contributions to our community. One of the newer and popular offerings is this Card Formatter. It lets you upload your card images, pick a layout, and export a duplex-ready PDF with corner crosshair guides, with flexible spacing and page sizes. Thanks again Martin! Link

Here are a few PNP-related crowdfunding campaigns that we thought you might find interesting:

Sole Survivor is an alien-infested spaceship solo survival challenge. It’s a print-and-play and rather lightweight affair: matches are brutal and short, much like life itself.

This is a solo survival card game where the player must explore the scenario, collect three loot tokens, and survive against hostile Xeno creatures.

Across three scenarios the difficulty increases as Xenos become more aggressive. In the final scenario, a Boss enters the map and relentlessly hunts the player.

To win, the player must collect all the loot tokens and survive all scenarios without being killed by the Xenos or the Boss. Link.

Courage & Cunning is a quick trick-taking game with a twist. Beat your opponents to the loot with higher courage, or cunning, whichever fits the situation, as you explore the treacherous, labyrinthian Maw.

Gameplay is describe as “fencing on rocket skates” as players have 6 cards and 6 rounds to score the most loot.

The Kickstarter Edition includes two expansions: Heroes of Cax, which adds 6 playable heroes with asymmetric abilities, and Into the Maw, which adds 2 new modes of play: Story Mode and Solo Mode. Link

Fight a titan, wage a war of conquest, have a drawing contest using only dots, or just try to build better words than your friends - all in the palm of your hand.

One Card Wonders is a library of single-card games that covers a wide range of genres and mechanisms, including area control, dexterity, hidden movement, abstract, racing, pattern recognition, dice games, drawing games, word games, and more!

The set includes the few simple components needed to play all of the games, each of which can be set up in seconds, and you can learn and play in minutes. The games can also all be played pretty much anywhere. Link

Submit your PNP crowdfunding projects here:
PNP Arcade Submission Form.

In The Weekly Haunt you will take on the role of a monster hunter. Slay beasts and terrors with supernatural powers. Battle terrifying monsters while racing the event track. All the while a complication is making your job harder. Oh and don’t forget to save the innocent civilians who are oblivious to the dangers all around them!

As a variable style game you will be able to swap out any of the components for a new game experience as we release a new component each week for the 3 months following the campaign.

Follow along the campaign here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jasongreeno/theweeklyhaunt

…but while you are there, we have a little surprise for everyone.

Free games!

We’ve made the core sets for our three Pages games (Dungeon Pages, Dangerous Space, and Power Creep) all free at the page. Some of these have never been available for free before. Save $12 to get them for free, but make sure to follow along the page too!

Are you looking for your favorite publishers from PNP Arcade? Check out this list.

Alexander Shen: If you’ve never played Quests Over Coffee or any of Alexander’s other fun games, be sure to check out his stuff on Itch.io. Link.
Button Shy Games: With hundreds of games on PNP Button Shy started uploading games on Itch.io and The Game Crafter. Expect regular releases of the older library of games as well as new content to come. Itch.io Link. The Game Crafter Link.
Cezar Capacle: Brazilian game designer, graphic designer, architect and musician. He’s been creating unique games for the past five years, on a variety of genres. Link
Clearly Sharp: Home page for Daniel Young, the designer of Gem Getter and Forest Floor. Link
Daws of Darkness: The Lost Village and its mini-expansion are now available at itch.io. The thick line art style of these co-op games really makes them stand out. Link
Epic Endeavor Games (Jason Greeno): The independent games by JG can be found on his Patreon page. Link.
Grimscribe: If you are looking for the year-long Grimlore series, you can find those here. Publisher Website. PNP Stash.
Jack Neal Games: Jack’s games about power, value, and systems (Rust and Revenue and Charters: Profit Through Public Works) are now available at JackNealGames.com. Link.
Jason Greeno / Epic Endeavor Games: Jason hosts his collection of games like Night Class (superhero roll and write) and The Cursed Menagerie (haunted cards and dice) at his new Itch.io page. Link.
Kealf Games: The new location for all things from Kelvin Soong of Kealf Games. PNP Stash Link.
Mark Tuck: Mark has brought his collection of PNPs (from the beloved Orchard to Pocket Aquarium, and many more) to the Game Crafter. Link.
Nathan Meunier: Featuring many of his games in both physical and PNP, you can now grab Doom Machine, Mindbenders, Hot Garbage and more at doomthoughts.com. Link.
PNP Arcade Publishing: For everything Dungeon Pages (and more to come) check out the PNP Arcade page at Itch.io. Link
Shiny Pigeon Games: PNP Arcade previously hosted Around The World In 15 Minutes, but at their site you can pick up Starfront Scouting Academy and the Packing Party series of games. Link.
We Heart Games: The Itch store for Mike Berg’s games (Crownfell, Exobase, Exoship) has the entire catalog of games. Link.

Would you like to submit a PNP Game?

With the help of publishers, designers and the community we will continue to share PNPs with all of you.

Click this link to submit information about a game

Don’t miss the weekly print and play games and news.

Games featured in these posts are not sponsored.

PNP Friday for May 8, 2026 - What I Love About Village Emporium. Plus PNP news.

Fri, 08 May 2026 13:04:12 GMT

Welcome to Print & Play Friday! It’s May 8th and we’ve got a fresh batch of print and play news and games for your reading (and playing) pleasure.

Main Feature: What I Love About Village Emporium
New Games This Week
Community Spotlight: Top 5 PNP Games (but from 2021)
Crowdfunding News (PNP Previews & Campaigns)
Where Are They Now?

What I Love About Village Emporium

JASON GREENO // MAY 8, 2026

What a fun find! Village Emporium, designed by Ways Unseen drops you into the role of a shop keeper who must balance foraging, trading and selling to earn the best reputation (high score). This is a cozy game of a few meaningful choices, some random results that generate a fun story of how you helped the locals find the goods they needed and building your store with upgrades.

Setup

This game sets up fast. Roll a few dice—you only need two, any color— but I like matching the colors to the land types :) This determines your starting resources and tradeable goods.

Gameplay

On your turn (of which there are six times four seasons) you will choose to either Forage or Trade (unless you hire an assistant—highly recommended). Foraging brings in more resources while trading gives you a chance to purchase from local traders (in hopes of later selling better goods to customers).

Two important mechanics in the game to utilize strategically are:

Haggle Points: This limited resource allows you to charge an extra gold for each sold item to the SAME customer. So you’ll want to save this for a customer who wants a lot of your goods in one shopping trip. But don’t wait to long to use this push your luck option because at the end of the year you’ll have wasted any unspent haggle points!

Eagle Eye Points: Are you having trouble locating quality forage resources? This is where Eagle Eye points come in! Spend a point to improve your Forage roll by 1 (pushing you up the table of rarer resources. Really need a Pearl, but rolled a 4 (Trout)? Spend two Eagle Eye points and turn that roll into a Pearl! BOOM—Now to track down Gunnar—the customer who’s hoping to pick up that shiny object for his wife :)

Upgrades!

What shop would be complete withouta Fancy Sign or Extra Storage or a Window Display…you get the idea. These upgrades give powerful options that break the rules and help you leap ahead of the competition! But spend wisely—ie don’t do what I did which was to bankrupt myself early on and have to spend a bunch of turns generating income 😮.

Out and About Events

Looking to up the difficulty? No problem. Village Emporium comes with an optional module that adds random events to your forage attempts. Think roaming goblin raiders, forage surge or grumpy traders. I love how the story evolves with such a simple table mechanic in the midst of the main gameplay.

Tally Your Earnings

At the end of the year you’ll total up your score (locations visited, shop upgrades, number of out of town customers helped, coins accumulated. But reduce your score for each haggle and Eagle Eye point spent. Ouch!

Where to Find Village Emporium?

You can find this great little game at the designer’s Itch page here. If you get the game please stop over to our Discord channel and share your score and stories!

But wait—there’s more!

Wanna grow your game and interactions? You can also pick up the Orc Raiders expansion for even more challenge.

Each week we share the new releases in the world of Print and Play. Here’s what’s new this week:

Button Shy’s newest PNP is now available at itch.io and The Game Crafter for just $3. The game is not even available physically yet and is already over 2200 recorded plays at Board Game Geek, which is incredible.

In The Daily Weather you will determine today’s unique setup using the real-world date and season, then use overlapping cards to work your way towards a solution. Score points for more effective solutions as you try to predict the unpredictable weather!

Itch.io Link / The Game Crafter Link

There’s also a surprise $1 expansion available that adds weeklong goals to your daily plays. Check out The Daily Weather: Weekly Forecast at Itch.io (link) and The Game Crafter (link).

Dungeon Pages: Underboss - Grim Dragon: The year-long set has been updated with the newest boss and dungeon. A new dragon debuts this week and thi might just be the nastiest of the bunch! This boss’s Cursefire ability will deal damage to ALL heroes if it first slays one of their companions—damn. Link.

Publishers / designers submit your new PNP releases here: PNP Arcade Submission Form.

Top 5 Print And Play Games (dated March 2021)

How about a little relic, looking back at Top 5 Print And Play Games… from 5 years ago. And not a current video looking at the state of PNP from 2021. But this video was released then, and it’s fascinating to take a look back at some PNP thoughts at the time, at least from the eyes of Danny C from Gaming, Fandom, and Science.

Here are a few PNP-related crowdfunding campaigns that we thought you might find interesting:

In Midtown Mall you will build the most profitable mall in 20 minutes! This is a crunchy solo roll & write about product strategy , marketing, and customer hype from Dozens Of Us Games. It’s live on Kickstarter now with a Pay What You Want level that starts at $3. Link.

Print & Crawl is a print & play dungeon crawler for 1–4 players with a 12-scenario campaign. It’s designed to give you the classic dungeon crawler board game feel in a print & play format. Cheaper, easier to set up, and no big box. It has the cutest little paper minis and costs £7.00. Link.

And now for some campaign previews:

DIE Ball is Button Shy’s first modular game. Their modular games are tiny sets that you combine to play a full game. In DIE Ball two players will combine any two sets (teams) to play a 9 cad per player, hour long, Blood Bowl-lite, head to head, battle-sport game… loaded with Goblins, Mummy Cats, cubes, dice, and plenty of big moments. Coming to Gamefound next month. Link.

Minomancer: Roll Them Bones! is a solitaire Roll & Write game chronicling your invasion into the domain of a rival necromancer. Roll dice to raise your skeletal army and empower them to look for keys, find hidden trapdoors, and bring the fight to your enemy! Link.

Submit your PNP crowdfunding projects here:
PNP Arcade Submission Form.

Are you looking for your favorite publishers from PNP Arcade? Check out this list.

Alexander Shen: If you’ve never played Quests Over Coffee or any of Alexander’s other fun games, be sure to check out his stuff on Itch.io. Link.
Button Shy Games: With hundreds of games on PNP Button Shy started uploading games on Itch.io and The Game Crafter. Expect regular releases of the older library of games as well as new content to come. Itch.io Link. The Game Crafter Link.
Cezar Capacle: Brazilian game designer, graphic designer, architect and musician. He’s been creating unique games for the past five years, on a variety of genres. Link
Clearly Sharp: Home page for Daniel Young, the designer of Gem Getter and Forest Floor. Link
Daws of Darkness: The Lost Village and its mini-expansion are now available at itch.io. The thick line art style of these co-op games really makes them stand out. Link
Epic Endeavor Games (Jason Greeno): The independent games by JG can be found on his Patreon page. Link.
Grimscribe: If you are looking for the year-long Grimlore series, you can find those here. Publisher Website. PNP Stash.
Jack Neal Games: Jack’s games about power, value, and systems (Rust and Revenue and Charters: Profit Through Public Works) are now available at JackNealGames.com. Link.
Jason Greeno / Epic Endeavor Games: Jason hosts his collection of games like Night Class (superhero roll and write) and The Cursed Menagerie (haunted cards and dice) at his new Itch.io page. Link.
Kealf Games: The new location for all things from Kelvin Soong of Kealf Games. PNP Stash Link.
Mark Tuck: Mark has brought his collection of PNPs (from the beloved Orchard to Pocket Aquarium, and many more) to the Game Crafter. Link.
Nathan Meunier: Featuring many of his games in both physical and PNP, you can now grab Doom Machine, Mindbenders, Hot Garbage and more at doomthoughts.com. Link.
PNP Arcade Publishing: For everything Dungeon Pages (and more to come) check out the PNP Arcade page at Itch.io. Link
Shiny Pigeon Games: PNP Arcade previously hosted Around The World In 15 Minutes, but at their site you can pick up Starfront Scouting Academy and the Packing Party series of games. Link.
We Heart Games: The Itch store for Mike Berg’s games (Crownfell, Exobase, Exoship) has the entire catalog of games. Link.

Would you like to submit a PNP Game?

With the help of publishers, designers and the community we will continue to share PNPs with all of you.

Click this link to submit information about a game

Don’t miss the weekly print and play games and news.

Games featured in these posts are not sponsored.

PNP Friday for May 1, 2026 - Q&A with Designer/Artist Nathan Meunier. Plus PNP news.

Fri, 01 May 2026 13:10:05 GMT

Welcome to Print & Play Friday! It’s May 1st and we’ve got a fresh batch of print and play news and games for your reading (and playing) pleasure.

Main Feature: Q&A with Designer/Artist Nathan Meunier
New Games This Week
Community Spotlight: Tabletop Tolson looks at Townspire
Crowdfunding News (PNP Previews & Campaigns)
Where Are They Now?

Q&A with Designer / Artist Nathan Meunier

JASON TAGMIRE // MAY 1, 2026

Today we have a little Q&A with Nathan Meunier. You may know Nathan as the designer of Doom Machine, a super popular PNP (and physical) game from 2021. But you may also know Nathan’s art from the same game! And many more. Nathan is one of the lucky few (as I call them), who are greatly talented in both design and art. That combo is really helpful for a PNP publisher, not only to help offset costs, but also to really just go all in and make games both look and feel like they are uniquely yours. If anything, you can spot a Nathan Meunier game from a mile away, which is very special in world of print and play.

Let’s ask Nathan some questions!

1) Which 3 games would you say were most inspiring to you as a designer at the time that you started designing games?

Though I play a lot of heavy euros these days, I grew up playing Magic: The Gathering back when it first launched (yeah, I’m old), so my first few designs were definitely influenced by that for sure. Ironically, I would say much heavier worker placement and engine building games like Russian Railroads were a big influence when I started designing, even if those elements didn’t show up in my first few games. I mostly design solo games now, so I also found a lot of inspiration in Deep Space D-6 and dice-heavy games, too.

2) What is your favorite part of the design of The Blessed Dark?

I really enjoyed the physicality of working on a game by hand. The Blessed Dark was one of the first analog games I made after creating and launching several digital games, and I loved the speed of iteration and getting from idea to a playable prototype that making small board games affords you. It’s such a different vibe from coding.

The Blessed Dark was particularly fun for me because it married my interest in darker occult themes with my love of card and dice games. Folks tend to gravitate towards my creepier game designs, and this is the one that sort of kicked all of that off for me. It was also a fun challenge designing a game to fit inside a mint tin. Creating from constraints has always been a key element of my design process.

3) What is something interesting that was cut from one of your games?

I have an upcoming/unreleased mint tin game called Dead Machine Gods that I recently got the rights back to and will be bringing to Kickstarter later this year. The original version (which is the version I’ll be releasing) is a 1-2 player cyber-occult worker placement and tableau builder with complex euro scoring. When it got picked up to be published, I worked on developing it further into a 1-4 player game that had more components and moving pieces. This included adding a dice bumping mechanic, where you could stack and play your D6 worker dice on other players’ dice to trigger and occupied worker slot, and it would give them a boost, letting them positionally shift a D4 on their player card to gain some extra bonus resource of their choice within a triangle matrix that left two of three options uncovered for selection.

It was a super cool system that worked great when the game was aimed at a larger box with more components. But the publisher is no longer, and since I got the rights back, I’m going to be launching the original mint tin design — which is still pretty complex and thinky, but didn’t need the extra layers — which wouldn’t fit in the mint tin anyway.

4) What is your prototyping process? Are you cutting and printing? Using digital tools?

Since I do all the art and graphic design for my own games, I’m a very visual oriented designer, and I find having at least something nice looking on the cards and components I’m working with is a key part of my process. I’ll usually start my designs by selecting a limited number of target components for the game (18 cards, some dice, and a dry erase marker, for example). From there, I’ll begin playing around in Affinity Designer laying out elements and kitbash some kind of visual card elements until I have something that is ugly but functional looking. I’ll often throw some placeholder art in just to help me get a vibe and theme going.

Then I’ll usually print it out, cut and sleeve the cards, and gather the components so I can start kicking the tires and testing if the design works at all. I design and iterate very quickly when I find a groove. Getting a game prototype to the table as fast as possible is the best way to see what works (and what’s utterly broken and needs fixing). Once the proof of concept is there, I’ll make adjustments, write on the cards or take notes on changes, re-print out builds and keep tinkering until the bones of the game are solid. Sometime I’ll do this digitally using Tabletop Simulator, but I prefer testing my solo games physically most of the time.

That’s usually when I start actually making the final art. For some people that’s the last step, but I find that making the game look finished even before the mechanics and tuning are 100% final makes me more inclined to finish the game. It also helps with playtesting, since I’ve found a lot of people are somewhat less enthusiastic about trying out games that clearly look like prototypes than they are more polished near-finished projects.

5) Tell us about a great game store you’ve visited. What is special about it?

When I worked with CGE, I went to GAMA one year in Reno, Nevada. While I was at the show, I met some really cool folks who turned out to run a nearby game shop called The Glass Die. While we were chatting, I learned they were Doom Machine fans, which was a super cool surprise. My co-worker ended up having a birthday gathering at the shop a few days later, and we hung out and played games and vibed with the owners and a handful of other industry peeps. It’s a lovely game store, and I super like its rad DIY vibe and the fact it has a cool mini-bar with great micro brews. If you’re in the Reno area, I highly recommend stopping by, it’s run by some great folx.

Image from The Glass Die on Yelp

6) What is a game theme that you’d love to design for?

I’m a total slut for foraging, crafting, and survival games. Legit. I play a lot of video games in that vein, and I’ve been dying to make something analog that combines those mechanics with some of the more horror themed stuff I generally gravitate towards making. I’m planning to take a stab at making an 18 card game in the genre as one of my next few projects.

7) Where do you struggle the most as a designer?

Life is hard. I find that keeping my creative momentum going amidst big sweeping life changes has been extremely difficult the last 5-6 years. Also, while my ADHD/Autism brain can have its super power moments, it sometimes gets in the way of getting things done in the timeframe I’d like. I’m either going from a prototype to a completed game in a month or taking 2 years to finish a design. I’ve been on a bit of a game release hiatus the last couple of years to get my personal world a bit more solidified than it has been, even though I’m sitting on a half dozen finished or near finished games. It’s only recently that I’ve started dusting things off, working to rebuild lost momentum, and prepping to get some of those games lined up for release. It’s fun to be designing again, too, but it can be hard to start things up and try to rebuild momentum after taking a long break.

8) What was the last game that really wowed you?

Kabuto Sumo. I bought it on a whim at Gen Con a few years back, but didn’t get it to the table until this year. While it’s a super straightforward game with a cute theme, I really love how wild and intense the matches get. I’m also a fan of how tactile the experience is — it’s very different from a lot of games I normally play.

Bonus question: What else are you working on?

I’m currently prepping to launch a new print-and-play focused game project called the Erase and Write Solo Series. It’s a series of 18 card solo PNP micro games that utilize plastic sleeved cards, several dice, and a dry erase marker. Each game utilizes the cards in different ways, with writing (and erasing) info on the cards as a core element. The games will initially be 18 cards each, but are designed to be expandable through micro expansions.

The first game in the series, Morbid Fortress, is a grim crafting, base building, and defense game where you are a necromancer attempting to build and defend a gnarly unholy stronghold to withstand invasion from meddlesome crusaders.

The second game in the series, tentatively titled Doom Machine: Death Hack, is a spinoff of my popular mint tin game Doom Machine. It utilizes some similar elements of Doom Machine, but incorporates a lot of roll-and-write elements as you attempt to hack and destroy parts of the machine before it destroys you.

I have other games planned, but those are the first up. Morbid Fortress will be launching first, with Doom Machine: Death Hack coming up next. Folks can join my newsletter at https://doomthoughts.com to be the first to get notified when the series kicks off.

Thanks Nathan! Really excited for all of this. Make sure you click on the links above and grab the new free release of The Blessed Dark below!

Each week we share the new releases in the world of Print and Play. Here’s what’s new this week:

The dark is calling... Gather blood, complete rituals, cast spells, and summon demons in a bid to gain the favor of the ancient ones. Will you become the chosen? The Blessed Dark is a cult-themed mint-tin card and dice game that features a mix of push your luck and light take that elements. Players work to build out a Grimoire of spells, gather the blood resources to power them, and conduct rituals (rolling the dice) to see what primordial energies that can harness to summon demons or trigger spells.

Grab the free print and play game at www.doomthoughts.com

Next up, we have two free Button Shy PNP previews, all part of their Spring Collection Campaign.

The new quarterly release games are coming from Button Shy! First up is Everything Machine a 2-6 player game by Connor Wielgosz featuring art by Adi ‘HW’ Sukondo.

Query rows and columns for clues to the hidden attributes. Guess quickly and accurately to earn a better score!

Itch.io Link.
The Game Crafter Link.

Also coming from Button is the game Shaper, a 2-6 player game designed by Mark Tuck with art by Filip Popovic.

Create unique images to communicate your secret clue in this cooperative picture-making game. Take turns channeling your inner artist to complete all the clues and win!

Itch.io Link.
The Game Crafter Link.

Dungeon Pages: Underboss - Dire Golem: The year-long set has been updated with the newest boss and dungeon. Introducing the Dire Golem. With a smaller battle grid this boss will be able to hide a bit but also Smash! Link.

Publishers / designers submit your new PNP releases here: PNP Arcade Submission Form.

A Look at Townspire

Kimberly at Tabletop Tolson does an a great job of introducing games. In this video we get a look at Townspire from Radosław Ignatów. This roll & write offers two options for the cards in the game (printable or app-based).

Here are a few PNP-related crowdfunding campaigns that we thought you might find interesting:

Inspired by the TTRPG Bookmark Jam on Itch.io, Nightbird Games set out to create bookmark‑sized games of their own—each with distinct mechanics and human‑made artwork.

The Gods Laugh At Your Spoils
Reel-Time Fishin’
Star Freighter
Dearly Departed
Mourningsyde (Inspired by Phantasm)

We’ve mentioned our next PNP Arcade Publishing project here previously, but it's getting closer and closer, and we’re getting more and more of the artwork in place.

As a variable style game you will be able to swap out any of the components for a new game experience as we release a new component each week for the 3 months following the campaign.

Follow along the campaign here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jasongreeno/theweeklyhaunt

…but while you are there, we have a little surprise for everyone.

Free games!

We’ve made the core sets for our three Pages games (Dungeon Pages, Dangerous Space, and Power Creep) all free at the page. Some of these have never been available for free before. Save $12 to get them for free, but make sure to follow along the page too!

Submit your PNP crowdfunding projects here:
PNP Arcade Submission Form.

Are you looking for your favorite publishers from PNP Arcade? Check out this list.

New this week:

The Forgotten Tower is the second mini-expansion to The Lost Village, adding 9 new cards to the game and greatly increasing the challenge.

Itch link

And some previous additions to the list:

Alexander Shen: If you’ve never played Quests Over Coffee or any of Alexander’s other fun games, be sure to check out his stuff on Itch.io. Link.
Button Shy Games: With hundreds of games on PNP Button Shy started uploading games on Itch.io and The Game Crafter. Expect regular releases of the older library of games as well as new content to come. Itch.io Link. The Game Crafter Link.
Cezar Capacle: Brazilian game designer, graphic designer, architect and musician. He’s been creating unique games for the past five years, on a variety of genres. Link
Clearly Sharp: Home page for Daniel Young, the designer of Gem Getter and Forest Floor. Link
Daws of Darkness: The Lost Village and its mini-expansion are now available at itch.io. The thick line art style of these co-op games really makes them stand out. Link
Epic Endeavor Games (Jason Greeno): The independent games by JG can be found on his Patreon page. Link.
Grimscribe: If you are looking for the year-long Grimlore series, you can find those here. Publisher Website. PNP Stash.
Jack Neal Games: Jack’s games about power, value, and systems (Rust and Revenue and Charters: Profit Through Public Works) are now available at JackNealGames.com. Link.
Jason Greeno / Epic Endeavor Games: Jason hosts his collection of games like Night Class (superhero roll and write) and The Cursed Menagerie (haunted cards and dice) at his new Itch.io page. Link.
Kealf Games: The new location for all things from Kelvin Soong of Kealf Games. PNP Stash Link.
Mark Tuck: Mark has brought his collection of PNPs (from the beloved Orchard to Pocket Aquarium, and many more) to the Game Crafter. Link.
Nathan Meunier: Featuring many of his games in both physical and PNP, you can now grab Doom Machine, Mindbenders, Hot Garbage and more at doomthoughts.com. Link.
PNP Arcade Publishing: For everything Dungeon Pages (and more to come) check out the PNP Arcade page at Itch.io. Link
Shiny Pigeon Games: PNP Arcade previously hosted Around The World In 15 Minutes, but at their site you can pick up Starfront Scouting Academy and the Packing Party series of games. Link.
We Heart Games: The Itch store for Mike Berg’s games (Crownfell, Exobase, Exoship) has the entire catalog of games. Link.

Would you like to submit a PNP Game?

With the help of publishers, designers and the community we will continue to share PNPs with all of you.

Click this link to submit information about a game

Don’t miss the weekly print and play games and news.

Games featured in these posts are not sponsored.

PNP Friday for April 24, 2026 - A look at the Cyberpunk TCG PNP. Plus PNP news.

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 13:31:39 GMT

Welcome to Print & Play Friday! It’s April 24th and we’ve got a fresh batch of print and play news and games for your reading (and playing) pleasure.

Main Feature: A Look at the Cyberpunk TCG PNP
New Games This Week
Community Spotlight: How to Build the Cyberpunk TCG Print & Play Demo Decks
Crowdfunding News (PNP Previews & Campaigns)
Where Are They Now?

A Look at the Cyberpunk TCG PNP

JASON GREENO // APRIL 24, 2026

I recently backed a little campaign you may have heard of—the Cyberpunk TCG. This little-campaign-that-could has raised a meager, $27 million dollars! So while I wait for the campaign to deliver in December (!) I thought I’d try the print and play demo set and let you know what you can expect.

Cyberpunk’s demo set reminds me of the early days of Magic the Gathering where the mechanics are pretty straightforward. I can hold in my head the strategies I want to accomplish and, relatively easily, predict the strategies my opponent might choose to deploy. Now that might sound like a downside, compared to other more complex games, but hear me out. I don’t know about you, but there’s been numerous times where I chose not to jump back into Magic or a other new TCG because it seemed like they were releasing with tons of new mechanics and effects. It left me feeling like I had no chance to catch up with more experienced players.

Magic has evolved into a 32-headed beast of moving parts that feels very daunting to try to understand, let alone be competitive within it’s tournament scene. Sure I can go play with friends but I’ve always had the mindset that I like to play tournaments or draft competitions. That’s just really hard to do that with a game like magic that has so much history built into it.

So, now it seems would be the perfect time for me to jump into a game like Cyberpunk. They’re definitely going to build interesting complex combos into cards in the near future when the sets actually released. As I said, this is a great place to jump in and learn the very basic system with the potential to grow with the game.

Lots of Possibilities Through Clever Design

Cyberpunk TCG has some very unique mechanisms. Th most obvious one is the ‘Gig’ dice system which represents your active jobs or gigs AND the value of the diec equal your Street Cred.

The designers took a big risk by introducing dice with the chance of scaring off people who might think dice inclusion equals random luck RNG—it’s just not the case. The team seems very aware of how best to use these random numbers without jeopardizing the integrity of a strategic competitive game and yet as a game designer.

The inclusion of the dice actually opens up the design space. Now there’s so much room for fun expansion ideas. When cards come out that will ask you to have high Street credit or maybe low Street credit or to compare individual dice results or to take a chance at rerolling one of your gigs and seeing what that result might be or giving you an extra added bonus to a card effect if your street credit is high, the possibilities are truly endless here and for it to be a nod to the original role-playing game, is a chef’s kiss.

It doesn’t hurt that now everybody gets to have this physical personalized element that they bring to the table showcasing your own flair. When I was picking up dice for this playthrough I knew that one of the playmats I had printed out was going to have a pink and off-white color scheme. So I made a point of seeking out a set of dice that matched.

Little touches like that endear you to the game. Why is that important? Because even if it’s not something you yourself will care about, lots of players care about that stuff and when people care about stuff, more people play the game and stay in the game and the community grows. And that’s exactly what you need for a new TCG community—an ever expanding community of players so that you can find people to play with.

Beautiful Art. Solid Graphic Design.

I love, love, love the art! There’s always the risk that a video game converted to a card game was going to have subpar art but that is not the case with Cyberpunk TCG. The characters are so well articulated and interesting to look at. There’s so much detail, style and attitude. I can already imagine myself picking up corporate cards and playing a very Arasaka themed deck, but also another deck with like edge runners, samurai, and cybernetic enhanced characters.

The art helps immerse you in the theme and gets your juices flowing for theme decks that you might want to play in the future, I can’t say I saw a single card whose illustration was underwhelming. Honestly, I think even the gear cards are interesting to look at.

Gameplay

Another thing that I personally enjoy about this game is how they have simplified the interactions instead of a multi-phase play a card, run an attack phase, then play some more cards and have to worry about, ‘Oh, did I play my cards too early?’ ‘Did I tip my hand to my opponent?’ No, that’s not here in this game. Here you have the 1) Play Phase and the 2) Attack Phase. You don’t continue doing stuff after the fact. This makes the turns much snappier because you’re not spending a lot of time trying to analyze.

It’s nice to know that some aspects of the game are just straightforward and the complexity and interest comes from the cards that you choose to play with in your deck instead of the manual aspects of phases and turn structure.

There’s also a really nice tug of war where grabbing dice gigs from your opponent is a sort of cat and mouse. This back and forth, push and pull, lends itself to a much speedier game. If you’re not careful, your opponent could come swooping in and suddenly have six or more dice at the start of their turn and it’s game over.

Then there’s the timer system which ends in a sudden death. These games are going to move much quicker than your average TCG which makes for a great competitive environment. If you’ve ever played Marvel SNAP, it’s sorta fast like that.

The Legend System

The Legends in this game (sort of like Commanders in Magic) double as not just powerful effects but also resources (called Eddie’s—the game’s resource). Imagine playing any of your other games like magic but you get to start with effectively four lands. Right out the gates you are able to play one great card or a couple of small cards. This really jump starts the game.

I’m not sure how I feel about the Legends entering play randomly (they are flipped up when you ‘cast’ them). But for just two resources to flip a Legend into play? I guess I’ll deal. Legends also determine your deck composition (40-50 cards must consist of color-casting cost no greater than what your legends provide. So if you have Goro and Saburo (shown below) you have 2x Green for each card for a total of 4 green (the max casting cost of a green card in your deck). This makes deck construction a snap but also encourages a lot of experimentation.

One gripe I have with the art is the amount of ink and thin fonts that are used. This will definitely be a challenge for some at home printers. I know that my printer which usually does a pretty good job and had a difficult time with text sort of filling in making it a little bit harder to read. It’s not a deal-breaker but it’s definitely something to consider doing. Maybe a test print of the first page before you go full out printing the entire deck or two decks of cards

Also side note, for the play mat I inverted the color scheme of the all-black mat shown in the rules. This allowed me to print 4 pages and assemble at full size.

But How Long Will this Game Last?

Good question. There’s a strong likelihood that that this game will be around for awhile given that: 1) It’s based on a very popular video game, which I hear is about to have a sequel, 2) Cyberpunk has history as a role-playing game, which my guess is going to get a resurgence and 3) at least one other board game that I’m aware of that exists in this universe. This creates a strong 4) Weirdco seems like they’re doing a good job of managing the Kickstarter campaign. If they deliver on time in December for us backers that’s going to speak highly to what we can expect going forward for new release schedules and competitive environment.

Solo Mode?

Not yet but… I’m tempted to design one. I’m sure that if I don’t do it somebody else is going to—I’m looking at you AzureDeath (Star Wars The Deck Building game solo mode designer).

Final Thoughts

I come from a background of really enjoying the Netrunner card game and can’t help but feel like I wish there was a little bit more jacking into computer program interactions. But I just heard that a new card type will be arriving with the first set. They’re called Quickhacks so who knows? Maybe I’ll get my wish. For now I’m excited to play some more. Hit me up in Discord if you want to talk about Cyberpunk TCG (my Discord name is jasongreeno).

You can try the Cyberpunk TCG from their Kickstarter page. If you like the game they are also still accepting late backers for the physical game.

This article is not sponsored and is solely my opinion.

Each week we share the new releases in the world of Print and Play. Here’s what’s new this week:

Dungeon Pages: Underboss - Twin Griffins: The year-long set has been updated with the newest boss and dungeon. Introducing the Twin Griffins. This duo will get their claws on those evil dice for a few extra rolls which could turn tide in youtr favor! Link.

Publishers / designers submit your new PNP releases here: PNP Arcade Submission Form.

How to Build the Cyberpunk TCG Print & Play Demo Decks

If you liked the above article about Cyberpunk TCG but have not build your own print and play card game before then you should check out the tutorial below:

Here are a few PNP-related crowdfunding campaigns that we thought you might find interesting:

In Sole Survivor you can’t fight the monsters, you can only run — until they reach you. Or you can hide — until they find you. Assembling a functional transporter in time is your only chance to escape, and it’s a slim one. But maybe you can use the ship’s tools to your advantage. Just don’t make any noise while you’re at it.

Only $6 with some dark, yet charming art, and a stacked team behind it. Check it out. Link.

Button Shy's Spring Campaign is live with 4 new games, AstroROVE, The Rise Of A Jarl, Everything Machine, and Shaper. Some solo (including the newest Joe Klipfel game) and some multiplayer. Get all 4 games, an expansion for each and a ROVE promo card all via PNP for just $8 (save $9). This is the cheapest you’ll probably ever see them with Button Shy PNPs hovering around $3 each. Link.

The following are Kickstarter previews. They aren’t available yet to back, but you can follow along for updates and launch notifications.

In Cryptid Creek: Build a Legend players craft fake cryptids from mismatched body parts to save your dying town. Only one can win in this competitive card game, but if the reality TV crew exposes the hoax, everyone loses. Link.

Regular Human Climber is a co-operative print&play trick-taking game about climbing, where you each control one limb and pull off wild moves together. Link.

Submit your PNP crowdfunding projects here:
PNP Arcade Submission Form.

Are you looking for your favorite publishers from PNP Arcade? Check out this list.

New this week:

Jason Greeno / Epic Endeavor Games: You may Jason’s games at PNP Arcade, like Dungeon Pages and Dangerous Space, but he also has a run of games like Night Class (superhero roll and write) and The Cursed Menagerie (haunted cards and dice) at his new Itch.io page. Link.

And some previous additions to the list:

Alexander Shen: If you’ve never played Quests Over Coffee or any of Alexander’s other fun games, be sure to check out his stuff on Itch.io. Link.
Button Shy Games: With hundreds of games on PNP Button Shy started uploading games on Itch.io and The Game Crafter. Expect regular releases of the older library of games as well as new content to come. Itch.io Link. The Game Crafter Link.
Cezar Capacle: Brazilian game designer, graphic designer, architect and musician. He’s been creating unique games for the past five years, on a variety of genres. Link
Clearly Sharp: Home page for Daniel Young, the designer of Gem Getter and Forest Floor. Link
Daws of Darkness: The Lost Village and its mini-expansion are now available at itch.io. The thick line art style of these co-op games really makes them stand out. Link
Epic Endeavor Games (Jason Greeno): The independent games by JG can be found on his Patreon page. Link.
Grimscribe: If you are looking for the year-long Grimlore series, you can find those here. Publisher Website. PNP Stash.
Jack Neal Games: Jack’s games about power, value, and systems (Rust and Revenue and Charters: Profit Through Public Works) are now available at JackNealGames.com. Link.
Kealf Games: The new location for all things from Kelvin Soong of Kealf Games. PNP Stash Link.
Mark Tuck: Mark has brought his collection of PNPs (from the beloved Orchard to Pocket Aquarium, and many more) to the Game Crafter. Link.
Nathan Meunier: Featuring many of his games in both physical and PNP, you can now grab Doom Machine, Mindbenders, Hot Garbage and more at doomthoughts.com. Link.
PNP Arcade Publishing: For everything Dungeon Pages (and more to come) check out the PNP Arcade page at Itch.io. Link
Shiny Pigeon Games: PNP Arcade previously hosted Around The World In 15 Minutes, but at their site you can pick up Starfront Scouting Academy and the Packing Party series of games. Link.
We Heart Games: The Itch store for Mike Berg’s games (Crownfell, Exobase, Exoship) has the entire catalog of games. Link.

Would you like to submit a PNP Game?

With the help of publishers, designers and the community we will continue to share PNPs with all of you.

Click this link to submit information about a game

Don’t miss the weekly print and play games and news.

Games featured in these posts are not sponsored.

PNP Friday for April 17, 2026 - Q&A with Designer Mark Tuck. Plus PNP news.

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 13:12:23 GMT

Welcome to Print & Play Friday! It’s April 17th and we’ve got a fresh batch of print and play news and games for your reading (and playing) pleasure.

Main Feature: Q&A with Designer Mark Tuck
New Games This Week
Community Spotlight: How to Build One Card Dungeon
Crowdfunding News (PNP Previews & Campaigns)
Where Are They Now?

Q&A with Designer Mark Tuck

JASON TAGMIRE // APRIL 17, 2026

Wwe’re back with another PNP Arcade Q&A! This week we’re talking from Mark Tuck, a designer from Southern England who you likely know from Orchard or Grove, as well as dozens of other colorful games, all featured at www.tuckgames.com. I’ve had the joy of working with him on the upcoming Button Shy game, Shaper, a finalist in a recent 18 Card Challenge, and now Shaper is coming to Kickstarter next week alongside 3 new Button Shy games. And of course there’s a PNP tier! Let’s see what makes Mark Tuck tick!

1) Which 3 games would you say were most inspiring to you as a designer at the time you started designing games?

I really got into game design in 2015 when I started entering BGG Print and Play contests. I only owned a handful of games back then. Friday was the game that showed me that you could design exclusively for solo play. I liked the compact box and small footprint, and how well the theme integrated into the mechanics. Limes (pronounced Lee-mez - so not like the Grove fruit) was my first taste of a puzzly tile layer. Playing it solo, I appreciated its simple rules and quick playtime. Forbidden Island was the first game (that was not a party game) that I managed to get my family to play. The visual appeal and great quality components had a lot to do with it. It was also my first experience of a coop.

2) What is your favorite part of the design of Grove or Orchard?

The custom dice, whose values increase exponentially, used to track your harvest. There’s something inherently satisfying about levelling them up - and they add a nice 3D table presence.

3) What is something interesting that was cut from one of your games?

Jack and the JellyBeanstalk had an interesting dexterity mechanic: players placed cubes (stalk sections) on top of vine cards (featuring jellybeans) to ‘grow’ the beanstalk, orientating the cards so that their chosen flavour of jellybean faced them and was ‘collected’. To balance the stack without it tumbling, cards had to be placed off-centre, jutting out at different angles and by different amounts. However the publisher wanted to make it easier to build a high structure and so changed this mechanic. In the published, rethemed, game, ‘Squirrelin’ Around’, cards are always placed centrally and something is always collected regardless of their orientation. This results in a straight stack with no variation and little jeopardy. I always thought that the feel of the original game had been lost. And, just 9 years later, I decided to revisited it and created ‘JellyBeanstalk’, a streamlined, mint tin version with the off-centre mechanic and some new twists.

4) What is your prototyping process? Are you cutting and printing, or using digital tools?

I use hand scribbled paper components to test a concept initially. Then, if I think the idea has potential, I create more polished graphics on the Mac and print them for further playtesting - on paper for cards (then sleeved) and on sticker paper for tiles and tokens (mounted on cereal box board).

5) Tell us about a great game store you’ve visited. What is special about it?

KD Games is a small independent store around the corner from where I live which both sells and rents out games. You can also play games from their library for free at weekly gaming evenings. I’ve even ran the odd playtesting session there.

6) What is a game theme that you’d love to design for?

An old fashioned, traditional, sweet shop. Its walls lined with wooden shelves holding large jars full of colourful boiled sweets, chews and toffees that are sold by weight and packed into paper bags.

7) Where do you struggle the most as a designer?

Resisting the temptation to create the look of a game before sufficiently developing its mechanics and gameplay. I have a folder full of games, each one with artwork and logo, that have never seen the light of day.

8) What was the last game that really wowed you?

The Gang. Turning poker into a coop. For such a a simple concept it’s a lot of fun.

Thanks Mark! Don’t miss out on Shaper from Mark and Button Shy, coming to Kickstarter next week at Link.

Each week we share the new releases in the world of Print and Play. Here’s what’s new this week:

You’ve heard of Planet Hulk? Sharknado? How about Planet Shark? No? Well read on dear reader…

Long ago, Planet Shark was a glittering oasis of clear blue water. The Galactic Alien Council, certain the world was empty, cast its refuse from orbit year after year. Decommissioned weapons and the wreckage of forgotten wars fell like rain into the seas.

The Sharkanoid inhabitants of the planet, long hidden beneath the waves, were furious that their home had become a dumping ground. They cried out for vengeance against the uncaring Galactic Alien Council.

You lead these Sharkanoids. Rise up, arm yourself with the spoils of a careless galaxy, and crush your rivals.

This campaign-driven miniatures skirmish game invites players to lead warbands of Sharkanoids battling over a polluted ocean world.

For 2+ players. Games take 45–90 minutes.

Link.

Dungeon Pages: Underboss - Commanding Queen: The year-long set has been updated with the newest boss and dungeon. Introducing the Commanding Queen. This massive leader of a hornet’s nest will strike fear in the heart’s of even the most resolute hero. Luckily you get to be the Queen! Link.

Battle Pages - Kingdom of Gallisen Marching Order 4: That’s a wrap! Here is the very last sheet in the Battle Pages series. For those of you who like to wait until the year-long games have been completely assembled before binge-playing, now’s the time! You can find all 52 weeks worth of game sheets over at Itch. Link.

Publishers / designers submit your new PNP releases here: PNP Arcade Submission Form.

How to Build One Card Dungeon (Including a Pocket Version!)

One of the appeals of print and play games is their innate ability to be modified, deluxified or in this case shrunk! Starting with a great game doesn’t hurt either—One Card Dungeon started as a contest fan-favorite and went on to find success in crowdfunding. You can tell that a game is truly loved when community members like Robert (AzureDeath) create quality re-builds like the one in the video below.

Here are a few PNP-related crowdfunding campaigns that we thought you might find interesting:

Mechs, Futball, Futuristic Racing and Tank Battles? Seems like something for everyone! Debuting series 2 of their Mint Tin Series, Galen’s Games is offering a print and play backer reward that includes all 4 games, 2 expansions for series 2 AND 2 expansions for series 1—for $8. Yes please. Link.

7 to Midnight is the first of two keep-them-on-your-radar pre-launch campaigns. This self-described ‘cute’ horror card game is for 1-4 players. “As a Midnight Guardian you alone stand between the innocent critters of Shady Valley and Zumoffa.” Link.

Iron Quest: The First Ember: One more pre-launch game that is featuring some great looking game sheets. From the publisher:

In Iron Quest: The First Ember, you aren’t just filling boxes; you’re managing a skilled Viking crew and racing against time. Complete the King’s Orders or your ship ends in the cold dark of exile.

You can trade an email signup for a free map if this sounds like your type of game. Link.

Submit your PNP crowdfunding projects here:
PNP Arcade Submission Form.

Are you looking for your favorite publishers from PNP Arcade? Check out this list.

And some previous additions to the list:

Alexander Shen: If you’ve never played Quests Over Coffee or any of Alexander’s other fun games, be sure to check out his stuff on Itch.io. Link.
Button Shy Games: With hundreds of games on PNP Button Shy started uploading games on Itch.io and The Game Crafter. Expect regular releases of the older library of games as well as new content to come. Itch.io Link. The Game Crafter Link.
Cezar Capacle: Brazilian game designer, graphic designer, architect and musician. He’s been creating unique games for the past five years, on a variety of genres. Link
Clearly Sharp: Home page for Daniel Young, the designer of Gem Getter and Forest Floor. Link
Daws of Darkness: The Lost Village and its mini-expansion are now available at itch.io. The thick line art style of these co-op games really makes them stand out. Link
Epic Endeavor Games (Jason Greeno): The independent games by JG can be found on his Patreon page. Link.
Grimscribe: If you are looking for the year-long Grimlore series, you can find those here. Publisher Website. PNP Stash.
Jack Neal Games: Jack’s games about power, value, and systems (Rust and Revenue and Charters: Profit Through Public Works) are now available at JackNealGames.com. Link.
Kealf Games: The new location for all things from Kelvin Soong of Kealf Games. PNP Stash Link.
Mark Tuck: Mark has brought his collection of PNPs (from the beloved Orchard to Pocket Aquarium, and many more) to the Game Crafter. Link.
Nathan Meunier: Featuring many of his games in both physical and PNP, you can now grab Doom Machine, Mindbenders, Hot Garbage and more at doomthoughts.com. Link.
PNP Arcade Publishing: For everything Dungeon Pages (and more to come) check out the PNP Arcade page at Itch.io. Link
Shiny Pigeon Games: PNP Arcade previously hosted Around The World In 15 Minutes, but at their site you can pick up Starfront Scouting Academy and the Packing Party series of games. Link.
We Heart Games: The Itch store for Mike Berg’s games (Crownfell, Exobase, Exoship) has the entire catalog of games. Link.

Would you like to submit a PNP Game?

With the help of publishers, designers and the community we will continue to share PNPs with all of you.

Click this link to submit information about a game

Don’t miss the weekly print and play games and news.

Games featured in these posts are not sponsored.

PNP Arcade

PNP Friday for August 28, 2026 - What I Love About Gem Getter Pro. Plus PNP news.

Table of Contents

What I Love About Gem Getter Pro

JASON GREENO // AUGUST 28, 2026

Ok, but what’s the game about?

Simple Choices That Add Up to Something Bigger

More Than Just Digging for Gems

Daily Challenges

Your Next Favorite Roll-and-Write?

Want to support PNP Arcade?

Tales of the Windward Sea

Dungeon Pages: Underboss - Splatter Scarab

How to Make Print-and-Play Standees

Residue®: Solo Survival RPG

Submit your PNP crowdfunding projects here:PNP Arcade Submission Form.

Would you like to submit a PNP Game?

PNP Friday for August 21, 2026 - The ABC's of PNP: Part Five. Plus PNP news.

Table of Contents

Important Note

The ABC’s of PNP: Part 5 (VWXYZ)

JASON TAGMIRE // AUGUST 21, 2026

Voyages

Waypoints

Xmas Sweater

Yomi

Zombie In My Pocket

Want to support PNP Arcade?

Centi Print and Play Game Playthrough

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PNP Friday for August 14, 2026 - What I Love About Hero-ish. Plus PNP news.

Table of Contents

What I Love About Hero-ish

JASON GREENO // AUGUST 14, 2026

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Building Custom Dice PNP Tutorial

Launching soon…

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PNP Friday for August 7, 2026 - The ABC's of PNP: Part Four. Plus PNP news.

Table of Contents

The ABC’s of PNP: Part 4 (PQRSTU)

JASON TAGMIRE // AUGUST 7, 2026

Palm Island

The Quiet Year

Rolling Realms

Secret Hitler

Tiny Epic Galaxies

Unfair

Asmodee Print and Play?!

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PNP Friday for July 31, 2026 - What I Love About Master of Coin

Table of Contents

What I Love About Master of Coin

JASON GREENO // JULY 31, 2026

Setup and first turns

Diving In and Watching Videos

Locked Coins

Buildings

How to Attack

Technologies

The Eras Tour

Signal and Noise Playthrough (BGG 2026 Solitaire Print and Play Contest)

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PNP Friday for July 24, 2026 - The ABC's of PNP: Part Three. Plus PNP news.

Table of Contents

The ABC’s of PNP: Part 3 (KLMNO)

JASON TAGMIRE // JULY 24, 2026

K is for King Of The Tabletop

L is for The Last Lighthouse

M is for Monikers

N is for Naturopolis

O is for One Deck Dungeon

How to Make a Print and Play Game

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Submit your PNP crowdfunding projects here:
PNP Arcade Submission Form.

Submit your PNP crowdfunding projects here:
PNP Arcade Submission Form.

Submit your PNP crowdfunding projects here:
PNP Arcade Submission Form.

Submit your PNP crowdfunding projects here:
PNP Arcade Submission Form.

Submit your PNP crowdfunding projects here:
PNP Arcade Submission Form.