Spirited from Garphill Games – On Kickstarter in January 2026

There are so many games from Garphill Games (especially those that Shem Phillips is involved in) that I like, that news of a new game coming from them always raises my eyebrow in expectation.

We’ve now received an announcement of their next Kickstarter (after the just-completed Secret Societies) that will be coming in January 2026.

Spirited is unique in the sense that all three of the major designers from Garphill are involved in it: Shem Phillips, S J MacDonald, and Zachary Smith.

The art is also done by multiple Garphill veterans: Patri Balanovsky, Mihajlo Dimitrievski (the Mico) and Sam Phillips.

This was announced in a video last night, which given that it was New Zealand time, I was actually in bed when it happened, so obviously I didn’t see it.

And another first! I think this is the first of their major games that can play up to 6 players right out of the box (Raiders of the North Sea could be played with 6 if you include both expansions).

What is Spirited?

Well, it has anthropomorphized animals, so some people on BGG will already hate it.

But does it look cool?

Spirited is a civilization-building card game (with those animals) where you will be building wonders, armies, and recruiting clans with a bit of a push your luck element.

How does that work?

From the press release:

“Spirited is a highly interactive card driven game with set collection and push your luck elements. In each game players will select 7 of the 12 civilisations, or “clans”, (even more with expansions) to play with. Each of the clans has a unique card play power, with 10 of those cards per clan added to the deck on setup. Over the course of the game players will also be able to form allegiances with specific clans, gaining them unique ongoing player powers. Players can also build wonders by spending 7 cards, 1 card of each clan in the game.

Spirited has a high level of interaction with all players having 3 card play areas. Their hand of playing cards is safe from other players, their camps (set collection) are safe from other players but not from busting (overrunning), their road is the place where new cards arrive, and this is open to manipulation both by themselves and by other players, although only drawing cards from the deck at the end of a turn can cause a player to overrun. “

The game is set to take 40-80 minutes (accurate? Time will tell) so it doesn’t sound like it will overstay its welcome.

Just from the picture spread, it looks like it will have an interesting table presence too.

Not to mention the Kickstarter stretch goals that aren’t really stretch goals (another first for Garphill).

Yes, that’s right.

For every 1000 backers, another expansion will be added to the game.

The press release confirms this, saying that each expansion will contain four new clans and their wonders.

Secret Societies only had 1300 backers, so if Spirited ends up similarly, that’s only one new expansion.

But we can hope!

Variability with all of the clans will be a highlight of this game, I think.

In yet a final first for Garphill, Spirited will be coming to Boardgame Arena in either late November or December, so we can try it out without having to try and figure out Tabletop Simulator (which I still haven’t been able to do).

And maybe asynchronous play will be supported (which Tabletop Simulator doesn’t).

Assuming so, I am there!

I will be keeping a close eye on this one as it piques my interest.

If you want see the Kickstarter page for it so you can be notified when it goes live, you can find that here.

Does this catch your interest at all?

Let me know in the comments.