Starfriends: The 5-Star Game About What Everyone Else Thinks

Shipping on schedule? In this economy?
about 1 month ago – Fri, Feb 27, 2026 at 07:11:38 AM

Hey everyone, we wanted to reach out with a brief yet important update – Starfriends rewards have shipped! All of your decks, shirts, and new friends have been packed, assigned tracking numbers and should be headed out on their routes to you today. We know this is cutting it a little close on "February," but we're so thrilled to have gotten everything in place to ship to you before the month was out. Thanks to Cory, Meg, and our friends at CRWN for making it happen!

We can't wait for you to get your hands on this game, and hope you'll spread the rating-things-with-friends magic far and wide. As for Brainfruit: We're just a two-person indie studio, but we've been busy (a programmable pixel drawing pad?! a minimalist story-driven slot machine?!?!) and we're excited to keep you (some of our very first supporters) apprised of our progress. 

We'll probably stop updating this list from here, but we hope you'll sign up for our new, consolidated newsletter over at the main Brainfruit page. You're all ★★★★★ in our book,

-- Rob and Garrett
Brainfruit Studio

Starfriends ships soon! Hot backer surveys in YOUR area
about 2 months ago – Wed, Feb 11, 2026 at 06:58:50 PM

Hi everyone! We'll keep this very short because we all have plenty of emails to get to: We have good news. All Starfriends decks and affiliated rewards have made it to our fulfillment center. And in the very month of February 2026 that our campaign projected some months ago! We're so grateful to everyone at Longpack (our printer),  and CRWN (our warehouse) who've worked to make this happen. And so the moment is nigh! Your games, shirts, stickers, and in some cases literal new friends are ready to make their way to you. 

To that end, you should have received a survey from us via Backerkit to pick shirt sizes, confirm and pay your final shipping costs, and if you did reserve an original Starfriend drawing, enter a ranked-choice-style system for naming your three favorites out of all the ones Garrett drew.

We've been able to play a few rounds on our production decks and they're so much fun to shuffle and award around a table. Can't wait for them to dapple your parties and gatherings with mirth, joy, and perhaps even whimsy. (I only bolded that last bit because all the other paragraphs had a bold part in them.)

Thanks again for making it possible for this game to make this journey, the last leg begins now!

Rob and Garrett

Starfriends decks are making their Pacific voyage as we speak!
3 months ago – Wed, Jan 07, 2026 at 08:46:10 AM

Hey everybody, just a quick note to check in, since we haven't sent one of these updates in a minute. We've been busy lining up all the moving parts to ensure a smooth kickoff for Starfriends fulfillment in February, and I'm happy to report that we are on track. The first Starfriends decks have not only been printed, they're on their merry way to our shipping warehouse in Portland, via the noble and time-honored conveyance of sea travel. We got a couple boxes air-shipped to us so we could review the decks in advance, and forgive the technical language but they're so fucking cool!

The bulk of the print run is scheduled to hit our warehouse the first week of February. It's not quite that simple in terms of when we actually start shipping: We have additional rewards like the t-shirts, stickers, and drawings, and those need to be in-warehouse before fulfillment can begin. Everything's on schedule there -- shirts and stickers are in production, and Garrett has a day marked on his calendar to go feral and do all the one-of-a-kind Starfriends drawings. You can expect another update from us towards the end of January / start of February as these threads come into focus, but the key takeaway is we're looking good to meet our estimated February ship date.  

Before we go: If you haven't seen it yet, you've got to check out this recent Starfriends appearance on the Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast, featuring friend of the studio and world-class football analyst Mina Kimes. Mina had a great way of describing Starfriends to her cohosts, which I will paraphrase here and you can see at the link: "It's a game about takes, about knowing your friends, and about knowing your friends' takes." So we've got another box quote for our next printing all sorted. 

Thanks to Mina for showing what Starfriends makes possible, even between people picking it up for the first time! We can't wait for you all to have this experience yourselves. More soon, thanks again for making this all possible in the first place.

-- Rob and Garrett @ Brainfruit Studio

Starfriends is funded! Here's what's next
5 months ago – Wed, Nov 12, 2025 at 09:27:09 AM

Hey everybody, we did it! The Starfriends campaign has raced across the finish line, and our print run ended up over 200% funded. That's a ★★★★★ concept if ever there was one. 

We'll be getting in touch over the next couple weeks to start gathering your information for rewards fulfillment. We'll ask for stuff like your shipping address, your t-shirt size if you backed at our Cosmic Fashion tier, and a brief question to help us create your unique Starfriend if you reserved our Ultimate Starfriend bundle. Think of that last bit like a short sentence that will become the creature's soul. No pressure! 

Our decks and stickers are already in the process of being printed, and the shirts and drawings will follow soon after once we've got your information. So keep your eyes open and you'll be hearing from us (with your eyes) soon!

Thanks again for helping us make this first printing of Starfriends a reality.

-- Rob and Garrett

UPDATE 3: Proof's In! Discord Edition! Finale Livestream!
5 months ago – Fri, Oct 31, 2025 at 03:38:10 PM

Hey it's Rob, your friendly neighborhood Kickstarter creator with what has hopefully been a light touch on the emails. We're in the "steady middle" phase of the campaign, where the initial rocket fuel of our launch has worn off and now a handful of new people find us every day. Hello, recent backers, and welcome! 

Let's start with the most beautiful news: The proof deck arrived from our printing partners at Longpack. Look at this absolute unit:

Our campaign ends in 10 days, and while we chose not to do stretch goals, we ARE keen to get Starfriends in front of as many people as possible. There's nobody better to help us do that than you, the wise and tasteful cognoscenti who have been so cutting-edge as as to have already backed Starfriends. We've found the best way to get people excited about this game is simply to play it with them, and we've been experimenting ways to help you play Starfriends with your own friends even before decks are printed and available.

So! We are pleased to announce our new Starfriends: Discord Edition. It's totally free and easy to install from the browser at that link. You can schedule a friendly bot to post a random combination of star rating and topic at an interval of your choosing. It looks like this:

We think of this as a "slice" of the core Starfriends game ... instead of trying to come up with one pick that will satisfy everyone's different star ratings, everyone instead gets a single combination to brainstorm and debate about. It's great practice for the canonical game and you can "hand over your card" to answers you like by reacting with a joker emoji. That's how I play it, anyway! 

We've been testing this bot in several discords with thousands of collective users and we hope you'll try it out. There might even be some prototype expansion decks available... for a certain ephemeral holiday that is peaking .... (lightning crash) this very weekend! A-ha-ha-ha!!

Last but not least, the successor to the "steady middle" of the Kickstarter curve is the "big finish." We're excited to bring this campaign home with a rousing launch celebration livestream for the last two hours before it closes, from 7-9p ET / 4-6p PT on Monday, November 10th. We'll play Starfriends, we'll play our six-player city council sim Tide Breakers, there may even be a music set. Lineup TBD but mark your calendars now, be they virtual or physically on a wall!

Thanks as always for following our journey here, and as ever if you'd like to join our refreshingly chill ~smoothie bar~ discord, that's an invite right there. DM me once you arrive if you'd like your official Kickstarter backer role, which we've just now set up.

Last but not least, we've started making comics with the Starfriends themselves. Here's a new one I love by Andy Dubbin:

That's it for now! You're all five stars to us!

Rob and Garrett