Wingspan publisher Stonemaier Games’ next board game is full of bees
The next board game from Stonemaier Games is titled Apiary, and it’s about sentient spacefaring bees. The high-concept title was formally announced Wednesday in a company newsletter following an unscheduled leak online. While you might be inclined to poo poo the concept as a bit too out there, underestimate founder Jamey Stegmaier at your peril. The wacky themes he takes under his wing are regularly known for their industry-defining impact.
St. Louis-based Stonemaier has built its business on a string of unusual hits, beginning with 2016’s Scythe,which Stegmaier designed himself. The asymmetrical strategy game takes place in an alternate history version of 1920s Europe created by a singular Polish artist named Jakub Różalski. It includes idyllic scenes of rural life counter-posed by hundred-foot-tall, diesel-powered robots. Różalski’s work has since been turned into a real-time strategy video game, a short film by Neil Blomkamp, and a handful of successful expansions to Scythe itself. Its success helped to revitalize a hardcore corner of the larger hobby gaming space, breathing new life into legacy titles such as Twilight Imperium and seeding the marketplace for new games like Oath: Chroncles of Empire and Exile.
But while Scythe turned heads mostly among diehard hobbyists, Stonemaier’s next hit game, Wingspan, has become a mainstream hit. Designed by Elizabeth Hargrave, the ornithology-based game won the 2019 Kennerspiel des Jahres, one of board gaming’s most prestigious awards. Wingspan and Hargrave both have since been profiled by both The New York Times, The New Yorker, National Public Radio — even the National Audubon Society. Stonemaier has said publicly it’s sold more than one million copies — an astonishing
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