Nature is Calling The Nature board game launches on Kickstarter in September, but you can play it right now! Nature Kickstarter Notification Play Nature now Want to learn more? Keep reading as game designer Dominic Crapuchettes takes you on a journey into the creation of Nature.     Discover the Wonders of Nature Hello! I'm Dominic, the designer of Nature and founder of NorthStar Game Studio. I'm here today to share a huge project I’ve been dreaming up for the past decade.  Nature combines lessons from my days as a pro-Magic player and everything I’ve lear ..read more

NorthStar Game Studio - March Update Hi, I’m Dominic Crapuchettes, founder and lead designer at NorthStar. We’re starting a regular blog series to share insights into life at a board game company. We’ll cover a different topic for each blog, plus what we’ve been up to over the last month. First, for those new to NorthStar, I’ll briefly cover our history. A Brief History - North Star Games I’ve been making games since I was a kid. In 8th grade, one of my early designs got banned because too many students were playing in class! In high school, I designed a role-playing system and several games ..read more

Nature is Calling  In the wilds of Nepal, animals flock to the nearest watering hole...    While these lands offer abundance for the species that visit, dangers lurk in the shadows… From the publishers of the award-winning Evolution series comes a brand new expandable game system, Nature, where players create and adapt species in an ecosystem that changes as they play. Encounter social animals that work together to survive,   Predators that prefer to hunt alone,   And species fast enough to avoid danger.   Understanding Nature With over 10 year ..read more

5 Great Co-op Board Games for Puzzle Fans To celebrate the launch of Paint the Roses, our new cooperative puzzle board game set in the world of Alice in Wonderland, we’ve put together a list of 5 great co-op puzzle games for you to try at your next game night. There are countless more tabletop games we could have listed but these recommendations are tried and tested, staying in our collection for years to come. Let us know what would make your list in the comments below. Chronicles of Crime Chronicles of Crime is a series of cooperative games that cast you and your team as det ..read more

NorthStar announces rebranding and a new direction After almost 20 years of publishing board games, we’re changing our look and sharpening our focus. We’re adapting and ensuring we’re better placed to continue making the games we’re passionate about and that you’ll be playing for years to come. We will now release games under the name NorthStar Game Studio reflecting our focus on finely crafted game design. We also collaborated with the talented team at Quillsilver Studio, to create a new brand logo to encapsulate this. Over the years we’ve published exciting, award-winning ti ..read more

Before they release games, publishers like us send pre-release copies to reviewers. And those reviewers get to have a good time. They get to play all the games long before anyone else and present them to the rest us like future-divining shamans. The popular reviewers float through convention halls with contrails of groupies (reviewer groupies exist btw) as publisher after publisher tries to catch their eyes with hopeful, upturned faces. It's good to be a reviewer.  It occurred to us there might be a fun opportunity here. What if we could give our fans a taste of what that ..read more

We've come to appreciate the value of doofiness, and that, in turn, has inspired us to explore other doofy game ideas.  In the course of our exploration, we found a game of such profound, undiluted doofiness that we feel we have no choice but to publish it (possibly against our better judgement). I'm writing today with a sneak preview.  We just finished designing the packaging, and it makes us proud, so this preview will consist of teasing you with the packaging without telling you much about the game. Except this: it consists entirely of saying the word "dude" over and ove ..read more

I’m Ben Goldman, designer of Paint the Roses. I’ve been developing board games at NorthStar for 6 years, working on Climate, Most Wanted, and Oceans but this was the first time I’d had nearly complete creative control over the design and I learned a lot through the process. After years in the making, Paint the Roses launched on Kickstarter, being selected by the platform as a “Project We Love” and reaching its funding goal in just 30 minutes. This article will discuss some of the challenges faced in turning my original idea into the version of Paint the Roses we see today. For the sake of yo ..read more

Our latest title, Paint the Roses, is a brand new cooperative puzzle board game headed to Kickstarter on Oct 12th. Set in the world of Alice in Wonderland the game features brand new art and illustrations reimagining its characters.   Today I’m joined by Jacqui Davis the illustrator of Paint the Roses. Jacqui is both a book and board game illustrator and has worked on a wide array of tabletop releases such as Ex Libris, Cubitos and Viticulture. Hi Jacqui, thanks for joining us. For those unfamiliar with your work could you tell us a little bit about yourself? Hi! I’m ..read more

Dominic - You might have noticed a few little changes beginning to occur around our social media and website. We've got big plans for the future so I’m very excited about our new hire, Ross Connell, who joins the NorthStar team as our Community and Marketing manager. His passion for board games, photography, and community led him to create a popular website (www.MoreGamesPlease.com) that brings attention to the artists and graphic designers behind the board games we love.  He has also been hired to photograph games like Root, Kingdomino, Isle of Cats, The Mind, Ticket to Ride and many o ..read more