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After making its name with Knizia, Bitewing Games is looking to video games for its next big hits
“Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, trusts two random dentists to make a fantastic board game.”
That was the problem facing Nick Murray and Kyle Spackman, two friends who fell down the board game rabbit hole while at dental school together, when they decided to launch publisher Bitewing Games in 2020.
Bitewing’s efforts to reach out to designers ultimately provided what might have seemed an ambitious solution to that credibility problem: work with one of the biggest names in board games, prolific German designer Reiner Knizia.
Knizia and his team presented the fledgling publisher with seven prototypes to choose from, three of which became its first publishing project: the Criminal Capers Collection.
It proved the start of a defining relationship. Bitewing has since published 16 Knizia games across more than five years, building a particular reputation for digging through the legendary German designer’s enormous back catalogue for overlooked titles it believes can be successfully reworked for today’s market.
Those successes have included Zoo Vadis, Cascadero, Cascadito, Iliad, Ichor, Silos, Ego and Orbit – with Bitewing’s campaigns featuring Knizia titles among games from other designers having raised more than $2.2m between them.
But after a run of six Knizia releases last year, Murray believes Bitewing has now found “most, if not all” of the hidden gems that suit the company’s catalogue – and is increasingly looking towards video games as another route to finding potentially long-lasting hits.
He told BoardGameWire, “There was a period of time where Bitewing was finding some phenomenal hidden gems in Knizia’s catalogue and inspiration struck for how to evolve them, and we were fortunate that Reiner was up for revisiting them with our development goals in mind. That all culminated in a truly wild run of 2024 and 2025 Knizia releases… an explosion that I don’t expect we’ll ever see again.
“Of course we are still finding a few here and there like Gold Country, Eureka, and Escar-GO, but after playing over 200 different Knizia games (and researching hundreds more) I’ve increasingly felt that we’ve found most (if not all) of the hidden gems that are a great fit for Bitewing.
“The other thing worth noting about re-implementing older games is that you are immediately fighting an uphill battle. You see it from gamers, critics, localization partners, and retailers, especially those who have been in the industry for enough years – if a game is perceived as “old”, even it is entirely new to them and dramatically updated, they lose interest.
“Even when we go to great lengths to show how the original designer has improved the gameplay and the art team has enhanced the presentation, helping a game evolve into something even more special and exciting (at least in my opinion), it’s sometimes not enough for certain folks.
“Entirely new games have a huge psychological advantage over reprints, rethemes, and reimplementations – unless that old game is considered a major classic like Ra or Cyclades.”
Successful Roll
Bitewing’s push into video game-inspired titles began with Balatro-inspired Rolling Deep, whose Kickstarter campaign alongside Eureka raised more than $700,000 this summer – more than double the revenue of any of Bitewing’s previous 12 crowdfunding projects.
The publisher is now pushing further into video games with adaptations of two established indie releases – most notably acclaimed 2019 puzzle game Baba Is You, which picked up a string of major industry awards on its release and has sold hundreds of thousands of copies through digital PC distribution platform Steam alone.
Launching alongside it is Party House, one of the breakout games from highly regarded 2024 retro videogame collection UFO 50. Its creator Jon Perry is also designing Bitewing’s tabletop adaptation, adding to a board game CV that already includes Air, Land & Sea, Spots and multiple award–winning 2025 release Hot Streak – Murray’s favourite board game of last year.
The shift forms part of a significant new phase for Bitewing, which also saw Murray step away from dentistry this year to work on the publisher full-time – making the commercial success and longevity of the games it chooses increasingly important.
Murray told BoardGameWire, “The most deliberate change we are making is shifting our focus from many small passion projects to more carefully selected heavy hitters. Especially now that I’ve stepped away from dentistry this year to go full-time on Bitewing, I want to make games that have the best potential to last more than one or two print runs.
“My family’s livelihood depends on me making smart decisions with the projects we take on. So we’re not only trying to reach new audiences (like the solo gaming community with our Table For One Series, Rolling Deep and Eureka), but we’re also trying to find and create the very best experiences in each genre.”
Murray told BoardGameWire that despite his long interest in video games – he says he has owned every major Nintendo console and handheld since the NES was released in the mid-1980s – making board game adaptations of digital titles “wasn’t really something we were actively seeking”.
He said, “Obtaining licensing rights for established IPs is a rather intimidating challenge. Plus that’s only half the battle – having a great IP to slap onto a game box doesn’t automatically make it a great board game. But we were lucky enough to have a huge opportunity land in our laps, and we’ve fully embraced it.
“The two projects that have really blown the doors open for us have been Rolling Deep and Baba Is You: The Board Game, which are both designed by Peter C Hayward. So if anyone deserves the credit for being a catalyst to Bitewing’s strategic evolution, it’s Peter.
“As a huge fan of Balatro and Baba Is You, and a very capable board game designer, Peter set out to pay homage to Balatro with a dice-crafting roguelike adventure and adapt Baba Is You to a 2-player strategy game, in collaboration with the developer of Baba Is You. When Peter pitched these designs to us, I was hooked. I’m already a huge fan of Balatro and Baba Is You, so those were an easy sell for me.
“With Rolling Deep, I realized that this was also a perfect opportunity to use a watercolor rubber hose animation style for the game – reinvigorated by Cuphead, which I’m also a huge fan of. So the first artist I reached out to was Caitlin Russell [the background artist of Cuphead], and we were extremely fortunate to have her join the project.
“From my perspective, we’re simply doing what we’ve always done… which is pouring all of our passion and excitement as fans of these types of games into the biggest opportunities we can find.
“Of course, despite Reiner Knizia being perhaps the world’s biggest board game designer, even he is eclipsed by so much of the video game industry. So I’m not blind to the fact that titles like Rolling Deep, Baba Is You, and Party House have a much bigger reach straight from day one.
“The longer I’m in the board games industry, the more I realize just how important it is to stand out. With over 5,000 new games releasing each year, it’s no wonder that so many great games are easily overlooked or quickly forgotten.
“While many publishers like Bitewing are fortunate to be sustained by an amazing fanbase, we’re all hunting for that next huge hit. Having one or more ‘evergreen’ titles in your catalogue allows for so much more security and growth.”
Finding Hits
Murray added that Rolling Deep’s success especially had affected how he thinks about selecting future releases.
He told BoardGameWire, “Rolling Deep has proven to me that for designers and publishers, you are much better off starting with something that is popular or widely loved and building a game or product on that.
“That doesn’t necessarily mean that it has to be an established IP or a direct homage to a specific game (like Balatro). Many huge hits have taken one or more popular ingredients and presented them in a thrilling new way: Dune Imperium combines deck building with worker placement (two very popular mechanisms). Magical Athlete takes wacky player asymmetry (another popular board game mechanism) and maximizes it in a highly approachable racing game. Wingspan takes bird watching (an immensely popular hobby) and turns it into the ultimate game for bird fans.
“In the case of Rolling Deep, the concept was ridiculously easy to get folks excited about with just one sentence: A Balatro-style roguelike solo adventure featuring dice crafting and artwork inspired by Cuphead.
“To me, Rolling Deep and other hits like the ones mentioned above have become the gold standard for how marketable we want all of our games to be.”
Murray hopes to continue that success with Party House and Baba Is You, which are due to launch together on Kickstarter on September 15 – and the campaign is already showing signs of reaching well beyond Bitewing’s existing board game audience.
He told BoardGameWire at the end of August that pre-launch follower numbers were tracking alongside Rolling Deep, while trailers for the two games had generated unusually high viewing figures.
The Baba Is You board game trailer alone has generated more than 240,000 combined views across Bitewing Games’ and Baba Is You video game creator Hempuli’s YouTube channels – far more than any of the publisher’s previous game trailers or videos.
That contrasts with Murray’s experience of the games’ reveal at Gen Con, where he said few of the board game media attending had played either original video game.
He told BoardGameWire, “My expectation is that we’ll see a huge percentage of our backers for this project be from the video game community rather than the board game community. And I’ll be thrilled if our adaptations help any of those people fall in love with board games.
“I firmly believe that board games are for everyone! Anyone who says otherwise just hasn’t found the right game for them (yet).”
But Murray added that attracting an audience from outside the traditional board game market also puts greater importance on getting the adaptations themselves right – preserving what people like about the original games without attempting to reproduce them wholesale on the tabletop.
He said, “I think a lot of adaptations make the mistake of trying to perfectly simulate or mimic the experience of the IP they are based on.
“Instead of embracing the strengths and mitigating the weaknesses of our tabletop medium, they try to cram a square peg into a round hole. Or they take the opposite approach and merely slap a popular brand on a board or card game without much meaningful connection between the two.
“Of course there are many phenomenal exceptions – see Slay the Spire, Mechs vs Minions, and Wilmot’s Warehouse, to name a few.
“With anything IP related, my goal is to wow both the fans and the creators of that IP. The adaptation should preserve the spirit of that IP, but it should also fully embrace and respect its form as a tabletop game.
“And it should stand on its own as an incredible board game experience, even for people who have zero familiarity with the IP.”
Murray added that he hopes Baba Is You, Party House, and Rolling Deep are enough to “get the ball rolling” for other video game adaptations.
The push into videogames does not mean Bitewing is moving away from Knizia, however, with Murray saying its long partnership with the designer “will continue” – adding that the company’s wider slate is also expanding through work with designers including David Thompson, Trevor Benjamin, Brett J. Gilbert, Kasper Lapp and Perry.
Murray said, “Folks will always regard Bitewing and Knizia as close partners, and we’re proud of it! But I’m always seeking opportunities to work with my favorite creators.”
The Kickstarter for Party House and Baba Is You is set to launch on September 15.
