Anyone who has rage-refreshed a budget carrier's seat map will appreciate the premise of OpenSky: a competitive board game where two to four players each run a low-cost airline, scrapping over routes and trying to stay profitable while undercutting each other into the ground. It is live on Kickstarter now and the campaign closes on 19 June.
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Start organising for freeThis is a meatier, more strategic offering than its theme might suggest. OpenSky leans on worker placement, push-your-luck, and a "real-time first-price blind reverse auction" for routes, played across a double-sided board covering Europe on one face and North America on the other. The studio behind it, Papaeya, specialises in travel-themed games (they previously put out airline titles such as Overbooked and a Low Cost Airline Manager game), so the niche obsession with load factors and turnaround times is the whole point rather than a gimmick.
Papaeya also states plainly that "all artwork is created by human illustrators, with no generative AI used." That has become a real dividing line for backers after a run of AI-art controversies on bigger campaigns, and it is the kind of commitment more publishers are being pushed to make up front.
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Set up your group for freeIf you like your economic games tense and your theme specific (think the airline-sim equivalent of a tight worker-placement Euro rather than a sprawling miniatures box), this is an unusual one to keep an eye on. UK backers should check the pledge tiers and EU/UK shipping on the campaign page before the clock runs down, since pricing and delivery details sit on the Kickstarter itself. With only days left to back it, the route map is closing fast.
Sources: Papaeya: OpenSky | Papaeya | Meeple Mountain
