City Square Studios 🎲🃏♟️

Going on a bit of a learning sprint for user experience and interface, bit of a break from the usual game design reading

52 Pickup Nickname Issue 34 - January 2026

Phew, just finished folding the latest batch of physical mini-zines!

We send physical zines to our top-tier Patreon members every 4 weeks. Y’all are the best ❤️

the ground is hexagons, the sky is diamonds

Spacemen looking at a catan board

Thinking a lot about hexagons lately...
#boardgame #meme #catan

Sweet, will take a look!

We have done a chess based skirmish mech fighting game before! Definitely could change out your mech pieces for minis if you want...

Yeah that's the worry, the concept I'm playing around with tries to keep that part simplified down, like remember two groups of 4 things.

Haven't really done something in this style before so doing some learning!

We'd be doing a 2-player vs standard playing card game, so luckily not doing a full TCG!

We have done a few chess variants already, we just have quite a few more ideas floating around...

I've been meaning to play that, looks really good

Would you rather have a two player TCG style standard playing card game, or a two player chess variant game

#boardgame #cardgame #tabletop

Chaosium coming back to NZ! Saw them when they came last year, we were tabling at the same convention (@waikatorpg.co.nz's Convergence)!

#ttrpg #nz

Coming soon: Dollhouse: A TTRPG about management A game where you and your fellow "Handlers" complete contracts for the titular Dollhouse.

I'm really excited to announce that Dollhouse has launch date!

The Kickstarter will be live on the 16th (in two weeks), and I'll be sharing more of the details for it in the time between! If you're interested in my work, please give the page a follow!
www.kickstarter.com/projects/125...

What about 52 😄

I think I find it interesting because you're not just doing math for an "answer" you're doing math to achieve an "experience" or some king of "balance"

T I D E S by fluffytheterrible6 A Story About Dreaming And Drowning

Heyyyyy just so you know its my birthday as of 15 minutes ago and I am the most specialist boy in the whole wide world.

If you wanna make me happy on my birthday check out my games
fluffytheterrible6.itch.io/tides
(more Below)

Balancing game math headache meme

#indiedev #gamedev #boardgamedev #ttrpgdesign

Tiny Library 2: d8 Modern Slimes

Our Bluesky followers and Patreon members are neck and neck at the moment!

YouTube video by Shut Up & Sit Down Briscola Chiamata - Card Games That Don't Suck

Our Kickstarter for Briscola Chiamata is fully funded! :)
This is a game that was reviewed by Shut Up and Sit Down some years ago. Check out the link below to find out more about our campaign, which makes the game easier to learn
www.kickstarter.com/projects/adr...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0an...

envelopes with year of the horse stamps

Monthly Physical Zines Set 📮

This week we sent out the latest batches of physical 52 Pickup mini-zine rulebooks containing original tabletop games like ‘Tavern Ship’ and ‘Nickname’.

Appreciate everyone who gives us feedback on our games, it helps us improve in the future, and because of how we release them we may be able to update and publish new stuff for them quickly!

Strategy thinking after the first game:
- steel helms: hold objectives or enemies, not much else
- cavaliers: throw at the big threat
- cannon: maybe does something
- marshal: support, pick off unsupported targets early, be more aggressive late game

#aos #ageofsigmar #tabletop

This also but I was trying to read heavy non-fiction, so I thought I had gotten super slow at reading, but as soon as I switched to something lighter the pages just melt away

City Square Studios | Patreon creating new and original tabletop games every single month

You can find all these games and extras below if you're interested

patreon.com/c/CitySquareStudios

All this to say it's confusing choosing what number! We went with the 34+ games because:
- 34 is the current issue of 52 Pickup
- The '+' leads people to look to see what else we've done
-'games' because people reading our bio for the first time likely don't know what 52 Pickup is yet
🧵5/5

Dice Dodgems banner

Racoon Tycoon inspired cocktail

This doesn't also touch on our boxed/PNP game Dice Dodgems we did right back at the start, or the non-game stuff we release like original cocktail recipes inspired by board games
🧵4/5

Booked at the DOUG-FEST zine

Tectonic Knights set up a table

But there's even more! We've also released special editions of 52 Pickup such as a collaboration with a local DIY music festival for their own TTRPG (Booked at the DOUG-FEST), and the extra issues we just drop as a bonus (like Tectonic Knights, a chess variant inspired by the xkcd comic)
🧵3/5

Escape the Petshop! set up a played on a table

Captain Seven's Doubloons set up on a table

Some of our issues actually contain two games instead of one, such as our very first issue (Escape the Pet Shop! and It Approaches!), and our July 2024 issue which had two treasure stealing pirate games, Black Spot and Captain Seven's Doubloons
🧵2/5

52 Pickup zines and a chess set on a market stall table

Let's talk about there's a '+' in our "34+ original games...".

We publish games monthly as part of the 52 Pickup zine series, the 34 number is the (current as of Jan 2026) number of mainline issues there are.

Hey that's easy, 34 means 34 game zines!

Well not quite... 🧵1/5
#boardgame #indiegame

TTRPG radar Game Jam Alert by Drew_Makes Monthly newsletter

Trying something new.

It's annoying when you see a cool game jam and there's only 3 days to finish it! So I'm working on a monthly Game Jam Alert to make it easier to keep up to date

#ttrpg #rpgdesign #gamejams
#ttrpgradar