Hello everyone! 

It has been a while since the last newsletter from this channel. Most of the news lately has been about Sky Empire, and for that, it makes more sense to use the Gamefound update system. That way, followers won’t get spammed across platforms with the same information.

This edition is a bigger one — an Essen report with thoughts on our booth, playtests, language plans for Sky Empire, so it feels right to share it as a newsletter.

First and foremost, I’d like to kindly remind everyone who hasn’t done so already to follow the campaign on Gamefound. Click the airship below to get there with lighter-than-air speed! 😉

(RIGHT CLICK OPEN LINK IN NEW TAB)

First of all, I want to mention the Sky Empire prototype competition!

This was one of our biggest eye-catchers at Essen and the reason many people signed up for this newsletter. Let’s go over the ground rules:

The competition will end shortly before the campaign launch, most likely between February and April 2026.

Everyone who signed up at our booth at Essen (around 600 people) is competing for one prototype copy of Sky Empire.

There is another prototype to be won by anyone subscribed to this newsletter — whether before or after Essen (as mentioned on the Gamefound preview page).

Our journey to Essen 2025 really began with our visit to SPIEL 2024.

At that point, I had already been working on Sky Empire for almost a year. Our main reason for attending SPIEL 2024 was to gain experience and research booth design. Back then, I had hoped to have the late pledge open for Essen 2025, so people could directly log in and pledge after seeing the game in person. Sadly, that wasn’t the case — but the delay and the cancelled campaign allowed me to prepare even better and lay a stronger foundation, so to speak!

Essen 2024 once again confirmed for me how unique this hobby truly is. Everyone was so friendly — from the biggest publishers to the smallest indie designers.

Of course, most of our inspiration came from the smaller indie publishers, rather than the massive booths in Hall 3.

What stood out to us was how important lighting was (especially on banners and displays), and how few booths offered anything interactive for visitors.

One that did stand out was the great western sandbox game Bantam West (its 2nd edition is now on Gamefound). Ike and Max was very friendly even though they where extremely busy!

It’s a shame that we don’t have any photos at all of Bantam West’s 2024 booth, because there were several things we really liked about it.
Firstly, they had display cases showcasing many of their miniatures. They had also created a very authentic Western-style environment, with barrels, large dark wooden furniture, straw on the ground, and a big counter with a huge cabinet behind it — looking just like an old saloon!

Another clever touch was their photo booth for visitors. You could grab some hats and prop guns, take a picture of yourself, and (if I remember correctly) another copy of your photo would be hung up at the booth —  like this:

So, a lot of our ideas were born when we saw Bantam West’s booth!

Another important encounter was with the people behind Ion Core. We talked a lot with them about their game and games in general.

It puzzled me later how Ion Core managed to proceed with their print run, even though they had only 288 backers at the time of funding. They also had some miniatures in their game — though not nearly as many as I ended up with.

I exchanged messages with Chris, who was very kind and introduced me to MOB Vanguard — which we’ll learn more about later. It turns out that their deal with MOB Vanguard helped them sell copies to another publisher – and thus helping them reaching the minimum order quantity to print their game.

Ion core at Essen 2024:

So, the inspirational groundwork was properly laid — and from there, we began researching and gathering everything we needed for our 2025 booth.

The final result can be seen here:

From her research, Nadia came up with several great ideas — one of them being the voting stand.
With help from Morten, we created some print files for the fittings to the plastic tubes I had bought online.
The result was truly stunning — a real showstopper!

Another chapter in itself was all the great playtests throughout the days. Around 40 different people had the chance to try Sky Empire, representing at least nine nationalities — Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Taiwan, Spain, and the UK.

It’s truly the best experience as a game designer to see people play your game — and get hooked by its systems and possibilities. I also witnessed a few new play styles I hadn’t seen before, which really warmed my heart.

It was fascinating to see how quickly a crowd would gather around the table whenever a playtest was in session. It reminded me once again that the best way to showcase a game is simply to have people playing it. Sometimes, the simplest truths are the most powerful — and the most convincing. 🙂

Aboves a picture of Anja (Germany) in the middle, playing against Michaela (Germany) on her left, Chien (Taiwan) on her right, and Eric (Taiwan) across from her.

Two (well, actually three) playtests really stood out.

One was when Arnulf (Denmark) made some incredibly smart combinations using the Augmentation development tree, the Augmentation Leviathan “Dopheus’ Pride,” and Zumbar’s Doppler special ability on the map, to run rampage on all other players.

Another memorable session was when Anja (Germany) used her first event to buy Augmentation I, deployed Daphne on the map, and in the very first round managed to secure the yellow crystal in the center and destroy one of Michaela’s starting airships — all with the same airship, and all in round one!

In between, she had picked the Salvage development, and when she sacrificed her airship to Michaela’s revenge, she rebuilt it using salvaged materials from Michaela’s own startship. By round three, she went on to crush Chien’s home base for the red crystal. It was an extremely clever use of both game mechanics and player psychology!

Of course, this left her far ahead in terms of crystals, holding both the yellow and red — but I also enjoyed seeing how the game naturally balanced this out. Anja now lagged behind in construction, with only three buildings compared to some players’ six or seven on the path to the blue crystal. She would have to shift gears from warfare to building in order to win!

A single playtest stood out in a slightly less positive way.

When I teach the game, I try to give small bits of advice without controlling what players do. In this particular playtest, a player decided to attack one of the Sentinel buildings at the very start of round one — using only one of his starting airships. I gently advised against it and explained the stats of the building, but he went ahead anyway, and of course, the airship was pulverized by the Sentinel.

He seemed a bit upset about it, but I reassured him that this is exactly why starting airships are extremely cheap to rebuild compared to all others — he could easily recover from it. Things didn’t improve, however, when in round three his other airship was destroyed by a spawning Sentinel airship. (At that point, he proclaimed, “Now I know who’s not going to back this game!” 😅)

I later tried to explain that standing on Sentinel spawn sites is indeed valuable — they are great resource locations — but it also carries a risk, since Sentinels may spawn there.

All in all, I suppose this just confirms that not every game is for everyone. I’ve encountered this before, especially with heavy eurogamers, who often don’t enjoy the Sentinel spawn mechanism. It’s a fair point — but in defense of the game, I’d say that players always know which six sites have a chance to spawn Sentinels, whether through event cards or action cards. So, if you want to claim those areas and keep them, just build a turret or two — or even an Aetherforge — and you’ll turn that spawning Sentinel into a loot piñata!

So, this mechanism isn’t going to change — it’s one of the most exciting parts of the game for many players. And honestly, a little bit of randomness keeps things interesting!

Now, I think this newsletter has already gone on for far too long, so I’ll just copy the information from Gamefound about languages and our collaboration with MOB Vanguard:

I’m very happy to announce that Greymarsh Games and MOB Vanguard have signed a collaboration agreement!

I’m not sure how many of you are familiar with MOB Vanguard and what they do — but, to put it simply, they help connect smaller publishers like me with larger publishers who want to license and translate games.

MOB Vanguard doesn’t just sign any game. They playtest every title first to see if it’s fun, well-designed, and has market potential. Since the first campaign didn’t reach its goal, I honestly didn’t have high expectations for this agreement to happen.

But it turns out MOB loves 4X games as much as I do! We’re now actively working together to pitch Sky Empire to several publishers in multiple languages.

So let’s talk languages!

I was completely blown away at Essen by the sheer number of German visitors who asked for a German version of Sky Empire!

The story was almost always the same: the person speaking to me had better English than I do — but they explained that two, three, or even four people in their playgroup don’t speak English very well, so they’d much prefer a German edition.

If even half of the people who asked at Essen end up buying a copy, I’m confident that the German version will be secured!

Here’s a quick status update for each language:

English version: ✅ 100% certain – main language

German version: 🇩🇪 95% certain – with a German publisher or by Greymarsh Games

French version: 🇫🇷 90% certain – with a French publisher or by Greymarsh Games

Polish version: 🇵🇱 60% certain – a publisher is interested; maybe a stretch goal

Italian version: 🇮🇹 50% certain – no publisher interest yet; maybe a stretch goal

Spanish version: 🇪🇸 50% certain – no publisher interest yet; maybe a stretch goal