PnP Arcade - newsletter edition

 I have already written about the tragic ending of PnP Arcade as a digital shop. The closing of its doors was a sad moment for the PnP hobby. For someone like me, who was a customer, it was quite the handy resource. However, it was an even bigger blow for PnP game designers. It was a place where they had a chance to get noticed in the vast and seemingly endless and definitely uncaring sea of the internet.

However, the dream of PnP Arcade isn't completely gone. It lives on as a weekly newsletter Substack, which has forced me to learn of the existence of Substack. Which has been a whole adventure in and of itself lol

This isn't the first PnP newsletter. For a while, there was a blog called Print and Play Games News on BGG that I actively followed. That was one handy resource but it was also a colossal amount of work to produce. I can scarcely blame its creator for hanging up their hat in 2020. Nothing lasts forever and there's no denying that it takes a lot of work to keep a PnP resource going.

The PnP Arcade newsletter comes out every Friday. There are articles about the PnP world, links to new products and crowdfunded games that are either PnP or have PnP options, and links to active creators. Plenty of links to itch io, which I am convinced to the Etsy of game developers. 

And, no, it's not the same. A one-stop shopping space with a vast and varied catalog was a powerful resource. A newsletter is not going to offer as much.

However, as I said before, it is obvious that PnP Arcade was a labor of love and required a lot of labor. I also doubt it made much money (please prove me wrong) Having it for as long as we did was great. And a weekly newsletter is still a good thing and heaps better than nothing.

I'll be reading the PnP Arcade Newsletter on a regular basis and I hope it keeps on going for years to come.

An elegy for PnP Arcade

 This was not a blog that I had been planning on working on. I had been thinking about working on something about Looney Lab’s Pyramid Arcade.

Then I saw that PnP Arcade was shutting down on January 29, 2026. 

It’s the end of an era.

PnP Arcade was an online store that sold print and play game files. I’m not sure how many different publishers used the site but I’m sure I wouldn’t have heard of a lot of them if it wasn’t for PnP Arcade.

The store started in 2018 and I know I was actively following it and using it by 2019. So I got a good six years of out it, checking every Friday for new games to see if there were any that interested me. Their Black Friday sale became a tradition for me.

I don’t think I can overstate the impact PnP Arcade had on my gaming life. By 2019, Print and Play had become a major focus for my gaming. I was actively looking at design contests and Kickstarters that had PnP options. However, PnP Arcade took me to the next level, looking at products that were intentionally created for home creation. So much of what I had been looking at were prototypes with the intent of being eventually physically published. In theory, the games at PnP Arcade were the finished product.

Frankly, the site let me explore whole new worlds of gaming. And between the backlog of games that I haven’t made and tried yet and the games that I want to keep on playing, even with the site closing down, I have years of entertainment ahead of me.

The notice that went up stated that life had just gotten too busy to keep on running the store. Which I can easily believe and completely accept. PnP Arcade had to have been passion project and a lot of work to keep it going, and I find it hard to believe that it generated a ton of profit, although I would be delighted to be wrong. If Jason Tagmire and Jason Greeno decide that they are burnt out on publishing games and want to sell aluminum siding door-to-door, they have already made a positive impact on my life.

Now, I do understand that PnP Arcade is going to continue in some form on Substack. Which means I have to figure out what the heck Substack is. However, it’s clearly going to be different.

Thank you to both Jasons for keeping it going as long as you did.

PnP Arcade’s prototype zone enhances its PnP experience

PnP Arcade has recently introduced a new section to their catalog, the prototype zone. It’s where you can download free prototypes of games with the option of giving the designers some feedback.

I like PnP Arcade and, more and more, it feels like a model of my print and play experiences. Many of the publishers that I have explored for PnP files are there. The guy who runs it is also in charge of Button Shy so naturally that’s there but there’s also Jelly Bean and Good Little Games and Metal Snail and many others in the catalog.

I’ve also seen older games ‘reprinted’, which is actually very nice. Yes, I already have the files but I have spent a silly amount of time on Boardgame Geek and other sites looking for PnP games. Actually being able to easily find some of these games is big help to the hobby. The most surprising story older game I found is Gro, which I bought in a hard copy form in a gallon baggy at Gen Con back when it was still in Milwaukee. (It was a different time)

But, as I have gotten more and more into PnP as a hobby, I have come to view games that are not from publishers as prototypes. That creates a very different criteria for what I’m looking for. I don’t approach them as a polished and highly play-tested game. Instead, they are a source of new ideas and questions. They are part of a process and it’s fun to be part of the process.

So PnP Arcade having a prototype section is one more way that I think it lets people explore the PnP experiences.

A couple of handy PnP sites for folks under lockdown

I have already written about a few games that, particularly if you are new to Print and Play, are worth making of you are under lockdown and can’t get out to game. Next, I want to write about a couple of web sites where you can find some nice print and play files.

Just like before, these are not the only place where you can find files but I really like these ones. 

PnP Arcade is the big one for me. Like the name implies, it’s a one-stop shopping grind for a lot of different kinds of PnP games. (Not war games, though. I’m not really into war games but I know there are sites like Wargame Vault out there) Jason Tagmire of Buttonshy Games helped create the site and I’ve been making PnP Buttonshy games for years.

In addition to games from Buttonshy, PnP Arcade has stuff from other publishers who do a lot of PnP. Jellybean, Good Little Games, Grey Gnome and Heavy Metal Snail are all companies I used to check regularly and I can now find out users they are up to through PnP Arcade.

PnP Arcade is chock full of free games so you can test the waters without having to pay anything. Although, if you’re like me, you will eventually spend some money there.

https://www.pnparcade.com/

The other site I want to mention is Cheapass Games. For years, they have had free games on their site, including some really good games like Button Men, Agora, Lightspeed and Kill Doctor Lucky. However, when they were promoting the retrospective ‘Cheapass Games in Black and White’, they added a proverbial ton of their older games.

(And, at least for a little bit, Greater Than Games is offering the digital version of that book for free)

What is great about the Cheapass Collection, from a lockdown/limited resource standpoint, is that most of them are black and white, as well as ink light. And some of them just involve making a board. The old Cheapass mantra of using dice and cards and pawns from other games has a whole new life under these circumstances.

Cheapass, particularly in their early days, made some pretty kooky games and not all of them hold up. But they can be a lot of fun and there are enough gems to make the site worth exploring.

https://cheapass.com/free-games/

As I’ve already written, there are actually a _lot_ of places to look for PnP tiles, free and otherwise. Boardgame Geek is probably the biggest single site, in actuality. And PnP Arcade and Cheapass Games do lean on the casual game side of things. But I still think they are great resources. And, if you are only just now exploring PnP as a gaming option, I think they are even better.