Announces 'Final' Title

Famed game designer Martin Wallace (Brass, Age of Steam) has announced plans to shut down his U.K. publishing house, Treefrog Games, after the production of what will be Treefrog’s final game title, A Handful of Stars.

Citing increased competition in the marketplace, Wallace stated on the Treefrog Game blog that he will be shifting his attention exclusively to game design, working with a variety of publishers who will handle the production and marketing of his designs, “It has been a struggle to keep Treefrog going for the last few years. The games market has become increasingly crowded with new releases and as a small company we have found it difficult to compete. I have decided that it is better for me to focus on my core strength, which is game design, and leave matters of production and marketing to others. There will be plenty more ‘Martin Wallace’ designs in the future, they will just lack the Treefrog logo.”

The final game produced under the Treefrog name will be the combination deck-builder and strategy game A Handful of Stars, expected to release in March. Built on the core mechanics Wallace used for A Few Acres of Snow and Mythotopia, A Handful of Stars is a science fiction game of empire-building in the “4X” style. Players use their evolving deck of cards to direct the actions of their star empire as they exploit their systems to produce resources, which are then used to expand their empires.

A Handful of Stars will feature artwork by Odysseas Stamoglou (Among the Stars, Simurgh), and comes with 1 game board, 1 player display, 109 cards, 38 tiles, 181 counters, and 135 wooden pieces. The game is for 2 to 4 players. MSRP is $69.99.

The production run for A Handful of Stars will be limited to 2500 copies worldwide, and will be sold only through pre-orders. In the U.S., the title will have a limited release through Grey Fox Games. In his blog post, Wallace indicated that the game system has been licensed to Fantasy Flight Games, but that company has made no indication of its plans for the game.

Wallace has been a long-time game designer, with titles currently in print with a number of major publishers including Asmodee, Mayfair Games, Grey Fox, and Eagle-Gryphon in the U.S. But relationships with some of these publishers have been rocky of late, including very public break-ups between Wallace and publishers Mayfair (see “‘Ships’ Sinks Mayfair, Wallace Accord”) and Eagle-Gryphon (see “Another Game Designer-Publisher Dispute Sparked by Kickstarter”).