Finspan reveal briefly crashes Stonemaier Games website as players flock to check out final game in Wingspan trilogy

Stonemaier Games has unveiled the final game in its bestselling Wingspan trilogy, with the fish-themed Finspan set for release in Q1 of this year.

Huge interest following the announcement overloaded Stonemaier’s website, despite the company having prepped its web host in advance that it was expecting a surge, Stonemaier co-founder Jamey Stegmaier told BoardGameWire.

Bird-themed tableau builder Wingspan quickly became Stonemaier’s highest-selling title by a considerable margin following its release in 2019, with more than 1.9 million copies sold over the following five years. Scythe, the company’s second best-selling title, had sold a still impressive 550,000 copies at the same point, despite being released three years earlier.

In an industry where selling even tens of thousands of copies of a game is often seen as a success, those numbers are astronomical, and made it a foregone conclusion that more games based on the Wingspan template would be in the works.

Stonemaier followed up Wingspan with a series of ongoing expansions that introduce new birds from different regions of the world, before releasing slightly more complex dragon-themed sister title Wyrmspan early last year.

Stegmaier told BoardGameWire that despite huge interest from fans for “re-skinned” versions of the original game featuring different creatures, the publisher had decided that the trio of varying complexity games exploring slightly different mechanics was the best fit for the series.

He said, “It’s all about balancing familiar-but-different. For Finspan, we were looking to make a slightly less complex version of Wingspan that fully embraced the aquatic theme, and the dozen or so mechanical differences in the game were driven by that theme.

“We’re happy with this being a trilogy of games; from lightest to heaviest: Finspan, Wingspan, and Wyrmspan. We have hopes and plans to expand each of them, but no plans to further increase the scope of the World of Wingspan.

He added, “A few years ago we had a big internal discussion at Stonemaier Games about the future of the Wingspan brand. We had many requests from fans to explore versions of Wingspan that focus on other creatures, but we didn’t want to just reskin Wingspan with other themes. We were interested in games that were familiar-but-different to Wingspan.”

Stonemaier said one the benefits to the strategy was in bringing in other designers to work on the two successor titles – giving Wingspan designer Elizabeth Hargrave room to work on expansions for the original game at a pace that was “best for her creative process”.

Hargrave said, “Fish have been a surprisingly common request from Wingspan fans but I didn’t feel like I had the bandwidth to do them justice. So I’m absolutely delighted that someone else was available to take this one on.

“As I did with Wyrmspan, I played the game and weighed in on the design at several key points in the development process. It’s been such an interesting puzzle to help make games that feel like they’re in a family with Wingspan, while still delivering a different play experience.”

Wyrmspan was designed by Connie Vogelmann, who was previously the designer of 2023 Stonemaier release Apiary, while Finspan has been designed by David Gordon – the co-creator of new LEGO board game Monkey Palace – and existing Stonemaier developer Michael O’Connell.

Stegmaier said, “Michael and David originally offered to help as developers, but eventually they became the designers of Finspan.

“As fun side projects, Michael had already played around with a language-independent version of Wingspan and a Pokemon version in which you could play Pokemon on top of other Pokemon (so they could evolve), which would later help to inspire a similar mechanism in Finspan.”

Stegmaier provided BoardGameWire with a quote from David Gordon which said, “From the beginning of our work, we tested with Elizabeth Hargrave. Her feedback was always on point, efficient, and constructive. It didn’t come as a shock to us that she knew exactly what this game could and should be as a product, and it was incredibly helpful to hear how she had solved similar issues in her original.”

Stegmaier added that he had decided to keep the “field guide” style of art from Wingspan for its new aquatic sibling, with one of the game’s artists Ana Maria Martinez Jaramillo providing illustrations alongside her sister Catalina and fellow artist Mesa Schumacher.

He said, “I was constantly impressed by the vibrant art they created for fish, especially given how many fish are mostly just various shades of gray and blue. I think it’s really important for consistent styles in a game like this.”

Stonemaier Games saw its profits rise in 2023 despite a continued fall in revenue, which was down almost a third from the record $24.7m the company reached in 2021.

The publisher’s revenue dropped to $16.7m in 2023 according to the company’s annual stakeholder report – down from $20.7m in 2022, and its lowest annual figure since the $12.8m it recorded in 2019.

But company president Jamey Stegmaier told BoardGameWire last March he had no concerns about the fall in revenue, saying, “Based on our reach and evergreen sales, I think a ‘normal’ annual revenue for us is somewhere between $15m to $20m, with the exact amount depending on when certain products ship.

“…there are no red flags as I look at our 2023 that have me concerned about last year or moving forward. My goal is not ‘number go up’.”

Stonemaier tends to release its annual stakeholder report – detailing its revenue, game sales figures and insights into how the business is faring – around the end of Q1 each year.