The 2025 Button Shy preview is here!

Hello everyone! It's that time of year again. Time to announce all of our games for 2025. We have a lot to announce and share but a few small details first.

These are the wallet games and walleted expansions that we plan to release or Kickstart in 2025. Sometimes things will get shifted, and those late Kickstarters will often ship in the beginning of the next year. We're including all of it. As a result of that, you may recognize a few of these from last year.

Also sometimes things happen and games end up shifting out completely or getting removed from our schedule due to delays or a contract issue. It's rare, but it has happened before. I just want to throw that out there.

Sometimes names or logos or wallet colors will change. We're really early on a few of these, so a shift in tone could happen as we get deeper into art direction and development.

And finally, this upcoming year is STACKED. Most BGOTMC packages are looking to be almost $40 after shipping. We made some great changes in 2024 that resulted in getting things out much faster. We're looking to make some additional changes for 2025 to make this all a little more affordable. We have a few thoughts and I will likely post them separately so we can discuss them in full uninterrupted detail.

And now... onto the preview!

2025 Wallet Line

These 12 games are what we are calling the 2025 Wallet Line. They may not exactly be the 12 that we will get here each month with stuff like Black Friday and shifting timelines, but it's as close to it as it gets right now.

Let's look at the individual games.

Adventurous is a cooperative game for 1-4 players from the team of Dustin Dobson and Milan Zivkovic. Sail the high seas aboard a unique ship in this tile-laying game of nautical adventure. Navigate encounters ranging from natural wonders to mythological marvels as you extend your route through uncharted waters. The further you sail and the more you discover, the better your journey!

Return to the Neververse with Battlecrest: Deadrock, our third year base set. Only the toughest and most brutal fighters can survive this desolate landscape. As with Fellwoods and Metronn, Deadrock comes with a new 6-card map and two new heroes. More heroes will be added throughout the year to test their might against each other and their environment.

There's another big Battlecrest announcement below. Make sure you scroll down for it.

Casinopolis is a standalone entry in the Sprawlopolis line of games, and plays similarly to the original with a few new twists. Place cards in an expanding map to create large groups of casinos, line up jackpot icons along roads, and balance scoring from three unique goals. You’ll need a little luck and a whole lot of skill to maximize your winnings!

Just a look at how much goes into the art for these games. It needs to be detailed but fade into the background at the same time. Such an intense mix of complex simplicity.

The race to save Malvios continues with 3 new entries for Converge by Peter C. Hayward. As with previous Converge wallets, each 18-card set is a standalone game that features 3 unique factions. Factions can also be swapped around to create all-new combinations. Craft the right team to meet ever-changing goals in your quest to survive the looming catastrophe.

Dionysia hit the holiday theme from an unusual angle by commemorating the festivals for Dionysus common to ancient Greece. This interesting and unexpected theme isn’t just set dressing: it carries through the whole game. From the cards being placed across a standard 3-act structure to the specific scenes available and the use of upstaging/downstaging to splay cards, Dionysia hit all the right notes. And its novel scoring mechanic, where players need to create specific lines of icons across their 9 cards to match their scoring scenes, earned applause from our judges.

Just take a look at this art from Dan Gartman.

Visit the sights in Downtown Las Palmas, an entirely in-hand solo game from Erica Pinto. Place cards in your hand to create an evolving cityscape, stacking cards to develop new buildings with distinct scoring elements. With each addition, you’ll need to manage more and more until it all comes falling down!

Stoke the fire or suffer the consequences in Embers, a solo-only game from Steven Aramini. As the campfire dies down, horrific threats appear out of the woods. The only way to keep your camp safe is with constant vigilance: a feat easier said than done.

Master the final level of the next Scott Almes Simply Solo Game Hyperstar Run by using your button cards to get past the dangerous enemies lurking in the Hyperstar base. As you advance, you’ll be able to access more button presses and set up powerful combos that extend across multiple cards. Complete each card in the level successfully to beat the game. You’ve got four chances to finish the level, so use the knowledge gained with each run to set yourself up for the win!

Lands of Amazement is the next installment of our Simply Solo line. Make your name by designing a variety of small amusement parks, then cap your career by creating a truly world-class entertainment destination. Each park requires correct placement of rides and facilities to ensure success. Entertainment is serious business!

You'll notice the theme is quite different than the original prototype, but for now we'll show you what that was like.

This Malaysian take on Chinese New Year delivered on everything we were looking for. Vibrant and elegant, Leaping Lions celebrated its holiday theme in every aspect of play. Seeing the lion dance across the platforms is pure fun, but it’s the complex interplay between the various platform cards that really makes the game shine. Every game requires a delicate dance between choosing unique abilities or scoring elements, playing cards or discarding them for upgrades, and managing the pool of draftable cards for the next turn. With a variety of ways to score and the potential for explosive combos, our games were full of big exciting moments that made us want to play Leaping Lions again and again.

As a member of the elite Phantasmic Dueling Squad, you know what it takes to wield the most dangerous spells. In this magical guessing game for 2-3 players by Marceline Leiman, you’ll test those skills by competing against other top spellcasters and use your knowledge of counterhexes to avoid getting knocked out of the competition.

Shallow Regrets is the leaner cousin of Judson Cowan’s game Deep Regrets, which blew us all away when he launched it on Kickstarter this year. Pull up unsettling curiosities in this strategic horror fishing game. Who knows what strange creatures lurk below the water's surface?

2025 Extra Stuff

I don't have a great name for this set of games, but they are a little bit extra. :)

The new Apropos games will be coming to the BGOTMC as single cards each month, eventually ending with a wallet.

The Converge games will be part of a big Kickstarter, and if I remember correctly, all 3 didn't come to the club. There will be an option to buy them with your discounts though.

Movie Plotz 10 Year Anniversary Edition is a celebration of our very first wallet game. It'll have all new art, and our 10 year silver wallet. We hope to do a few of these as we hit milestones. This should be coming to the club.

And then there's our very first big co-op boss for Battlecrest. This is another one that's a little extra so it'll probably be a discount instead of a club release. Let's look a little deeper at that one:

Close friends and bitter rivals team up against an incredibly powerful foe with the Battlecrest: Eterna Overlord Set. This new entry for 1-4 players by Mike Mullins puts a co-operative spin on the familiar Battlecrest gameplay, providing a boss character unlike anything the Neververse has yet seen. The included 12-card boss and the new 6-card map are fully compatible with all other Battlecrest products, allowing players to mix and match their Battlecrest experience even further.

2025 Expansion Collections

As you probably already know, we release a handful of expansions for each game. When we hit about 18 cards worth, we've been collecting them in expansion collection wallets.

I'm sure most of these aren't a surprise, but maybe they are? A few of these are sort of wrapping up with their last expansions, but some never stop (Skulls of Sedlec, I'm talking to you. Plague Doctors are coming in 2025).

WHEW! That's been a long time coming from our whole team here at Button Shy. We are really excited for 2025 and we hope you are too. Let us know your thoughts in the comments!