by W. Eric Martin

For me, Michael Yang's card game Compile: Main 1 was one of 2024's stellar releases. (If you're not familiar with the game, read or watch my July 2024 overview.)

In March 2025, publisher Greater Than Games announced the upcoming release of Compile: Main 2, which together with the mini-expansion Compile: Aux 2 would add fifteen new protocols to this two-player duel game about competing artificial intelligences.

Then in mid-April 2025, all GTG projects went on hold, and parent company Flat River Group laid off most of the staff "in response to ongoing economic pressures resulting from the international tariff crisis", according to a press release issued at the time. Compile: Main 2 had been scheduled for a Gen Con 2025 debut, but apparently that wasn't going to happen.

However, on July 9, 2025, Canadian publisher Synapses Games — which was recently sold by Flat River Group to ACD Distribution — announced that it had acquired the intellectual property rights to the Compile game line from FRG. In addition, Synapses plans to demo Compile: Main 2 at Gen Con 2025, with a retail release in late 2025. (In a FAQ accompanying its press release, Synapses writes, "We're working hard to secure a limited allocation of Main 2 for in-person purchase at Gen Con", but it cannot guarantee availability.)

Fred Bergeron, community relations and marketing coordinator for Synapses told me, "For now, our main goal is to focus on reprinting Main 1 and Aux 1 as there is high demand from the community. Next, we plan to release Main 2 and Aux 2 in 2025. It is important to listen to the community and focus on Main 2 and Aux 2 for now. These are our immediate goals."

I asked whether Compile's development team — which consisted of Yang and five GTG employees, including co-founder Christopher Badell — will be involved with future Compile releases, and while Bergeron offered praise to the "original development team", he said only, "We are already in contact with designer Michael Yang to discuss Compile. We both have many plans for the future of Compile."

Bergeron added, "Synapses was a natural fit for Compile. The editing team was familiar with the game because they managed all the non-English versions of Compile."

Bergeron declined to answer when I asked whether Synapses Games has acquired any other GTG properties, which means that for now most GTG projects — including the Sentinels of the Multiverse: Definitive Edition – Disparation expansion that was crowdfunded in April 2023 to the tune of $458,000 — remain in limbo.

I asked Badell whether he could talk about the situation, but he had no comment beyond pointing to his monthly updates on both the Disparation project (here) and the Sentinel Comics: The Roleplaying Game project (here) — updates that to my eyes mostly seem like expressions of frustration, as with this excerpt from the July 1, 2025 Disparation update:

I've sent questions about Greater Than Games' future to Flat River Group, but have yet to receive a response.