2025: The Big Year
2025 is dead! So let’s dissect it and talk about what last year meant for me, Zephyr Workshop, and everyone’s favorite robot board game. After a pandemic and multiple years of AEGIS2 development, this past year was extremely productive, transformative, mortifying, etc.
And so the story is told:
AEGIS Exists! Again! Wow!
If you haven’t been following the AEGIS COMBINING ROBOTS saga:
- 2016: Kickstarter #1 through Greenbrier Games (failed)
- 2017: Kickstarter #2 all by ourselves (great success)
- 2018/2019: AEGIS Combining Robots releases 18 months later! Woo!
- 2020: We sold out of all of our games!
- 2023: Kickstarter #3 for AEGIS 2!!!!!! And reprinting AEGIS!!!!! (great success)
- 2025: AEGIS1, AEGIS2, and seven other AEGIS SKUs fulfill to backers! Woooo!!!
Insert a lot of suffering between each bullet point. Like the time we almost got nailed with $75,000 of tariffs, or when we needed to move houses while AEGIS was shipping. In retrospect, if we were a day or two off from shipping the game because I was moving furniture, it would have never come out and my life would’ve been ruined lmao
But everything worked out! In what is surely our magnum opus, this year we finally completed and delivered an enormous amount of AEGIS. Two complete games with 100+ playable robots each, two 50+ page scenario/art books, a fancy 6-player mat, and a handful of expansions and doodads -and it all comes in a cute lil cube.
More content than any CMON game in package a fraction of the size. A culmination of the effort of dozens of people across years of development, and it’s…
AVAILABLE NOW!
Buy the game(s) direct from us!
And if you own a game store, it’s available via Japanime Games, and any distributor that has Japanime Games!
The Grand Tour Begins
Well, now that AEGIS is finally out (again), and that means it’s time for the convention rondo, forever and ever. In 2025, we hit up numerous events on our AEGIS “soft launch”, including:
- KublaCon (San Francisco)
- Origins (Columbus)
- Gen Con (Indianapolis)
- PAX West (Seattle)
- Game Market West (California)
- PAX Unplugged (Philly)
For some of these, we had convention-exclusive promos (that we’ll compile at a later date), with chibi art by Eyetypher!
In 2026 we’re on the road again, hitting up all the big ones: PAX, PAX, PAX, and Gen Con, with a bunch of others in-between. Hope to see you at one of them!
But Wait, There’s More (Games)
On top of shipping the world’s densest robot game, I worked on various other games in 2025 too!! Outside of AEGIS, I work as a game developer for Brieger Creative, and we do all manner of work on all manner titles for numerous publishers. A lot of that work this year was dedicated to games much smaller than AEGIS, but it turns out that when your game has like 2 mechanics, it’s very difficult to change or improve them!
1. SLAMBO!
Slambo! was a long-standing meme designed by AEGIS co-makerguy Ryan, and this year it was made into a real game, for real, published by big-real-company Allplay. It’s $9 whole dollars! I did the finishing work, rules, and other bells and whistles on it. I also added Uno Reverse to it, regrettably.
2. For The Emperor
For the Emperor is another $9 Allplay game released with Slambo! It’s a sick little area control dueler designed by Whitney Lorraine, and there may be more of it coming down the pipe. I led development on this, refining character powers, rules and a bunch of other stuff I can’t talk about yet.
3. TRIANGULATION
In Spring, I worked on the word list, rules, playtesting and other elements for this Peter C. Hayward deduction-game-that’s-kind-of-a-trivia-but-not-really that was part of a million dollar Kickstarter lol. It’s up for pre-order and hits this year! It’s like micro-Decrypto.
4. Kabuto Sumo: Sakura Slam
I nearly forgot that this one hit shelves in September! I guess AEGIS2 isn’t the only stand-alone expansion sequel I worked on this year. Kabuto Sumo rules, and I got to contribute a little to the main box, and lead the Swarm Expansion, which lets you assemble teams of 3 fighters and wombo combo their abilities. Truly AEGIS-coded.
5. THE CYBERPUNK 2077 TRADING CARD GAME
Perhaps the biggest reason why I fell off of AEGIS this year was this little project, which is destined for millions of dollars and a worldwide release. I was part of the core design/development team with on a 7-day churn of constant iteration during the Summer. What an amazing opportunity! This game’s publisher has great leadership and paid us very well. Our contributions felt valued and everything went smoothly. This one is coming to Kickstarter soon.
6. TOWERS OF THE SUN
Just (re)announced recently, my other big client project for Allplay is this cool abstract strategy combat game. A colorful strategy game with unique factions and battles? Sounds familiar, yeah? After months of burnout, I was very fortunate to start work in earnest on this one, refining all aspects of it and its associated expansion doodads.
This one’s also apparently had quite a long development, and I’m honored to be the one to put the final spiffs on it. It comes to Kickstarter this year!
7. FLORAFIORA THE STORYTELLING GAME
Story circle!
Story circle!!
Another long-standing Zephyr meme is Florafiora, which we won a couple awards for many years ago. Well, it’s a meme no more! Emily Hancock finally designed, produced, and printed one of its 1000 versions and it’s really cool – basically a one-shot RPG with a bunch of more codified board game mechanics that you can play in about an hour, from scratch. Uniquely good for both non-RPG players and storytelling aficionados alike.
It launched at the PAX West Game Market, and then it was at PAX Unplugged’s Indie Night Market, and is on sale at several future game market-type events…
I helped with the rule book and testing on this one, as well as a bunch of moral support, advice, and a decade of concerted effort on other versions lmao
And of course, I had a few other projects that I worked on this year that aren’t announced yet. Truly the most busy I’ve ever been.
Onward to 2026
So what’s coming down the pipe? Well, more client games, and definitely more AEGIS. Let’s look at some of the cool stuff:
MORE AEGIS MINIS!!
Thanks to artists Arzeloth and Patrick Fahy, we’re bringing more cool 3D Printable miniatures for some of AEGIS’s iconic top tier robots. Check ’em out! They’re still being finalize, but are up for pre-order!!
NEW AEGIS PIECES!
And Pat also made these guys! Lil 3D printable pieces to use instead of standees! Use one per robot, stack them when you combine. Got 2 As on your team? Double-stack 2 A pieces for one of them. These might make your setups faster than sifting for standees! We use them for playtesting to great effect.
Grab them from our online store now, print a million of them!
AEGIS: WILDMOVES
This is one we’ve had on the backburner forever now. This year will be the year, since it’s basically finished. It’s a quick 1v1 dueling game using all of AEGIS1’s commander characters, designed by Nicholas Trahan. Give it a whirl on TabletopSim! The print version of the game will have snazzier assets.
THE NEXT AEGIS
During 2025 we also made a shocking amount of progress on the next AEGIS stand-alone expansion box (!!!!), even doing a bunch of 6-player tests at Gen Con. Oho what shocking new mechanics, crazy characters, and insanely cool new robots will there be? Should we call it A3GIS?
The above have already changed a lot since Summer, but maybe you can glean some of the goofy stuff we’re trying.
The goal with this next one will be to both boil the game’s complexity down some, while also making it suitably weird and exciting for returning fans. I’m sure we’ll have it on TabletopSim soon enough, and you can be a playtester by having the Test Pilot role in our Discord!
Here’s to a fun and fruitful 2026!
Fight and Unite