NorthStar Explorers Artwork

NorthStar announces a new direction

After 20 years of publishing board games, we’re sharpening our focus and updating our look. We will no longer publish party games for the mass market, kid games for toy stores, or digital versions of our hobby games. Our entire focus will be on hobby games that are richly thematic, deeply strategic, and relatively easy to teach.

We collaborated with the talented team at Quillsilver Studio to create a new logo (see below), then commisioned an illustration based on the logo for Oceans: Legends of the Deep (see above).

NorthStar Game Studio Logo

We’ve manufactured and distributed over 6 million games since 2003; award-winning titles that catered to a wide variety of players. I love all types of games, but even with 30 employees, NorthStar was much too small to be everything to everyone.

We sold the Happy Planet brand to Exploding Kittens and licensed the worldwide rights to Wits & Wagers and Say Anything to Mattel. We can now focus entirely on board games for hobby gamers. Hopefully, this means you! 

By focusing on one market - my favorite market - we can spend more time crafting games and building an interactive relationship with our fans. Getting feedback will help us publish games that get to the table again and again.

On a more personal note, I can now spend more time designing the games I love. My desire to create captivating games has not wavered since childhood. I hope our new focus allows us to build the worlds you want to explore!

- Dominic Crapuchettes, Founder and Lead Designer

Dominic Crapuchettes

1 comment

  • Em: August 26, 2024

    I checked out your website because my husband and I just finished Eila and I found it so charming and the game design and function was so unique and beautiful. I hope you make more games like it! (Or an expansion or sequel!). You should feel so proud of what you accomplished! A beautiful and emotional story with simple and compelling gameplay.

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