Catnip Entertainment

22 April 2024

Our first Blog post. Exciting! If you haven’t read our ‘About’ yet, please do. Then again, do as you like. Life’s too short to be bossed around by a blog post.

So let’s start with the big question. Why start a new boardgames publishing house now, in 2024. Aren’t we a bit late to the party? Boardgames are booming. The New York Times now does a Christmas games roundup. The Atlantic recently had a feature on Cole Wehrle. Target now sells Spirit Island and Gloomhaven. In Germany, Austria and Switzerland, every mid-sized bookstore sells Elizabeth Hargraves’ Wingspan. The more adventurous stores offer a selection of Oink card games, Rosenberg classics and surprisingly niche hot-of-the-press items. In France, every mid-sized town seems to have a large, independent games shop. In the UK, The Dice Box is becoming the country’s first boardgame cafe franchise, open 10 to 10, every day.

And yet, boardgames are still where comics–excuse me, graphic novels!–were twenty, thirty years ago. There is tremendous room for growth. We live in a digital age, are chained to our email and phones. Boardgames are the ultimate analogue medium: tactile, in-the-moment, linear, social. They offer immersive worlds into which we disappear; produce stories and emotions; allow us to triumph and fail in safe, fun ways. They connect people hungry for community. Boardgames are made for our day.

Which doesn’t yet answer the question why we believe we have something to offer to boardgaming, as a hobby and as an artform.

The simple answer is that we think we can publish games nobody else does. Not in a grandiose, the-world-has-never-seen-anything-like-this way, but in terms of the specifics. Games that are deep as hell but quick to learn. Games that have tough decisions but also great flow. Games that give us agency and control, yet interest us in other players’ actions. Games that are social and thinky; narratively immersive but puzzly all the same.

Games that purr.

OK, they won’t actually purr, not literally. That would take batteries, and we don’t want batteries. But you know what we’re saying. We want to enrich boardgaming, add a fresh flavour, square a few circles.

Welcome to Catnip. Let’s get started.