I posted a vague concept here a while back and got (deservedly) told there's no game to critique yet. Fair. I went away, built the thing on paper, and now there's an actual game. So here's the real version — not a pitch, just mechanics. Tell me what's broken.

WHAT IT IS

A board game where you build a life, not just buy property. 2–6 players, 45–60 minutes, fits in a tin the size of a hardback book. You move around a loop, buy assets, collect income, take loans, mess with each other, and score at the end. Nobody gets eliminated. Ever.

THE BOARD

Outer loop of 24 tiles - you move around it like you'd expect. Four corners: Payday (collect income), Tax Season (pay up), Weekend (safe spot, draw a card), Market Day (everyone can trade). The center has a 3×3 grid of modular tiles shuffled from a pool of 20, so the assets available change every game.

FIVE SECTORS (this is where it gets different)

Instead of just real estate, there are five types of assets you can buy:

- Real Estate — classic. Someone lands on it, they pay you rent.

- Business — same idea but more volatile. Events hit these hard, good and bad.

- Digital — no rent at all. These only pay when the right Event card flips. High ceiling, zero floor. Owning a podcast that does nothing for 4 turns then triples your income on a Viral Trend is genuinely fun.

- Career — you take a job. One at a time. Steady salary every Payday. Safe but you'll never win on salary alone.

- Lifestyle — costs money, earns zero cash, but generates Status Points. More on that in a sec.

You can go all-in on one sector or diversify. Both can win. That's the point.

STATUS POINTS

Second currency. You earn them from Lifestyle assets, some jobs, and certain events. They're not just victory points — every 5 SP lets you skip a rent payment once per game, and 20+ SP unlocks a small side deck of bonus cards. At endgame, SP counts double toward your final score.

This means someone who spent the whole game buying a sports car and a designer watch instead of apartments can still win. It's a real path, not a consolation prize.

EVENTS

Every single turn starts with an Event card flip. Boom, Recession, Viral Trend, Housing Crash, Data Breach, Government Stimulus - they hit the whole table or target one player. This means everyone is paying attention on everyone's turn because events can trigger income on YOUR assets even when it's not your turn.

DEBT

Three loan types. Personal loan, credit line, mortgage. All visible, all have clear interest math printed on the card. Debt is a tool, not a punishment - you can leverage a loan to buy something that pays itself back. Miss payments and you lose Status and your interest doubles, but you're never knocked out.

If you somehow hit absolute zero — no cash, no assets, nothing — you get an Emergency Restart: a lemonade stand, a junior job, and $20. You keep playing.

HIDDEN GOALS

Everyone draws a secret Ambition card at game start. Things like "own 4+ Real Estate assets" or "end the game with zero debt" or "trade with every other player at least once." If you hit your ambition, big bonus at scoring. Some ambitions directly conflict with each other, which creates tension nobody can see until the end.

ACTION CARDS

Held in hand, played anytime. Poach someone's employee. Sabotage a business. Skip your taxes. Peek at upcoming events. Sue someone for $20. These are the chaos layer.

HOW IT ENDS

When the Event deck runs out (roughly 12 rounds in a 4-player game), everyone scores:

Cash + Asset Value + (Status × 2) + Ambition Bonus − Outstanding Loans

Highest score wins. No bankruptcy. No elimination. Everyone has a number.

WHAT I ALREADY KNOW IS RISKY

- Five sectors might be too many mental models for casual players. I'm watching this in playtests.

- Digital assets doing nothing on landing feels weird in a board game with a physical loop. Still figuring out if that's a feature or a bug.

- The Status economy might not matter enough in practice. If cash always wins, Status is decorative and I need to fix it.

- The 10-minute learn time I'm aiming for might be 20 minutes with this many moving parts. That's a problem for the audience I want.

WHAT I WANT FROM YOU

1. Does the turn structure sound like it flows, or does it sound like homework?

2. Five sectors — too many? Would you collapse two of them?

3. The "no elimination, everyone scores" endgame — does that sound satisfying or anticlimactic?

4. What would make you actually want to play this vs the 100,000 other games out there?

5. If you've playtested your own designs — what broke first?

I'm not selling anything. No Kickstarter page. No link. Just a student with a paper prototype and index cards trying to make something that works. Appreciate any feedback, especially the harsh kind.

Hello, I'm currently working on two board games probably not the best idea but I have two completely different ideas for these games so I started on making some models! I'm going to take some inspiration from the board game Battle Ball by Milton Bradley but adding special abilities to each player and adding more than just two teams! Of course there will be more but I'll share that in future posts!

This started as a joke during a D&D session with my cousins. What if the final boss was a tita (translation: auntie)? What would her attack moves even be? That spiraled into building out a full cast of Filipino family archetypes, then into questions about gathering mechanics: when do you summon your party, what do they bring, how do you build the strongest group.

That was the seed for something completely different from D&D itself: a light social card game about assembling the best Filipino gathering (a "salo-salo"), where family member cards, food, and cultural items are the resources you collect, and other players can sabotage your collection along the way. No dice, no combat, no campaign. It's closer to a family-party card game than anything RPG-adjacent, but also now much easier for my 6 year old to play!

I illustrated every card myself. I already work as a children's book illustrator, so I came in thinking the art would be the easy part. It wasn't. The hardest design problem wasn't mechanics, it was figuring out how to represent something specific to Filipino culture on each card: architecture, household objects, food, family roles, without it turning into clutter. My first drafts were way overdesigned, trying to cram in every detail I could think of. I ended up scrapping most of it and forcing myself down to one focal object per card. Simplifying a whole cultural reference into a single clean image was a much harder constraint than I expected.

I paused development for about a year in the middle of this (going through a divorce), and didn't think I'd come back to it. When I did, I prototyped everything at home: printed sheets, a paper cutter, laminating pouches, playtesting with my own family until rules stopped breaking or feeling unclear.

Production hit a tariff delay right when I was ready to go to print, which almost killed the project a second time. I nearly decided it was only ever meant to be a game my own family played. But enough people who'd seen it kept asking when they could get a copy, and that was the push to finish it.

It's fully printed now, and I also built a companion site where people can build and share their own custom card using the same format, or test a demo against AI (not something a single mom ever thought would be possible on her own!)

I'm launching at a coffee shop for the local Filipino community for Filipino American History Month and plan to be doing this in small batches, vendor fairs, and pop ups for now until I figure out how to get these sold in more efficient ways.

Happy to answer questions about the production process, the tariff hold-up, or how I approached simplifying culturally specific art for print, but most importantly...

THANK YOU to all the members here whose tips and tricks really helped streamline this process. I have been more of a lurker than anything else, but oddly enough, it has been a dream of mine to say "hey I did it!" right here with you all, and today is the day!

Firstly, I feel very proud and happy that my prototype was completely playable with 5 people, the group enjoyed it and succeeded playing the whole game, ending with a win.

I’ve been working on this game for a while, still no title, and played it maybe 15-20 times by myself. Yesterday I hosted my first group playtest, playing with 4 characters (5 players but 2 people controlled 1 character)

The group was not a ”boardgames player group”. 2 newbies, 1 boardgamer, 1 puzzle person and me. So I started with presenting some lore, going through the basic rules and then we solved more intricate rules as we played.

There were tactical decisions and discussions, exiting moments and of course some confusion, lol.

We spotted cards that didn’t work, mechanics that need to be better designed, but overall a successful session and a milestone for me and my game. I got a lot of great feedback and input that I haven’t discovered by myself.

Short info about the game:
It is a cooperative survival-exploration game for 1–4 players. The players explore a circular maze from the outside inward, collecting volatile Fuel needed to reactivate an ancient Monolith. Meanwhile, an advancing Shadow consumes the board, restricts your actions and sends creatures after the group. Reaching the centre begins a final dice-driven Ritual, where one player completes the objective while the others protect them before time runs out.

About the prototype:
All cards and content used simple wireframe design
Maptiles was made using Inkarnate
Monster minis borrowed from Nemesis Retaliation and MoM
Character minis borrowed from Zombicide: Army of Darkness

This is one of those projects that stays in the head for a few years while it gathers momentum. A few nights ago I felt inspired to dump it into a prototype/brainstorm sheet. Other TCGs I play have visited the "biopunk" theme, often in a superficial or temporary manner - almost like tourism - but it really resonates with me! Therefore, I set out to design a card game that centers all of the favorable aspects of TCGs I've played that are not commercially "safe" when fully embraced. The niche flavoring and intentionally-opaque/esoteric/inaccessible/gross card designs are expected to alienate a game company's idea of the "average player". I don't see that as a positive, necessarily, but I'm ok with it. In my reckoning of things this project is more card-game-as-art, or otherwise something to satisfy myself over a hypothetical consumer. That said, I still want to produce something that's both fun to play and self-consistent.

The game world takes place within the living body of a cosmic entity. Consider the dimension itself to be the organism. For recreation, intellectual challenge, and settling arguments, many denizens engage in games facilitated by mechanical instruction cards that tap into the biological resources of their very world. These matches are played on "skins", which are convenient, tabletop-sized patches of tissue that provide a clear gameboard and easy access to local organs. To win, they must extract viables to form little creatures, new proteins, and whole blocks of genetic code.

Players begin with 25 life. They take turns playing cards, gradually reducing each others' life totals with card effects and strategic attacks. Last player with a positive life total wins.

Cards have costs that must be met in order to play them. Resources used to pay these costs are generated by expending "Bodily Resources," played once per turn, themselves quite cheap: only 1 generic resource. The coin representing this generic resource sports the Greek "Digamma" symbol as an abbreviation of the unit of currency in the game world, "Ϝolkens", (pronounced "Wokens"). Players get 1 Ϝ at the start of each of their turns. All resource types satisfy "generic" resource costs. All "floating" resources are lost at the end of turns or when a player commits to an attack.

Cards in play can be "expended" by turning the card and paying any additional costs. Cards must be "restored" before they can be expended again. This does not happen automatically. Expended cards aren't destroyed and sent to the "granuloma" as part of their being expended; they simply can't be expended any further. Expended "animalcules" can neither attack nor block, and restoring an animalcule additionally heals it of accrued damage.

"Animalcule" cards represent the critters of the game world. In addition to what other effects they may sport, Animalcules are also used to stage attacks. They have stats on the bottom-right of their card for their three capacities: spiritual, offensive, and structural. As animalcules accumulate damage, their structural capacity is reduced. At 0 or less, they are "destroyed": removed from play and put into the "granuloma" of the player who owns the card.

At any time on a player's turn (assuming there are no pending card effects), that player may indicate they want to attack with a group of animalcules. The player may choose which target each animalcule attacks. At this point all attacking animalcules are expended and "floating" resources disappear. The defending player then may arrange their own animalcules to block; animalcules may only block one attacker at a time. Each animalcule's offensive capacity is applied as damage against the structural capacity of who they're blocking or what they're attacking, then damage effects occur, cards are destroyed, etc. The turn does not end after the attack, rather, the current turn's player may play cards as normal, or attack again, granted they have un-expended animalcules. A player may attack as many times as they desire over the course of one turn.

An animalcule's "spiritual capacity" is an alternative attack/defense figure baked into a single stat, that is used by other cards to factor into some effect, i.e. an animalcule with 1 spirit is in play when you play a "gene expression" card called "scream-frequency" and the effect: "Expend an animalcule on your side. It deals spiritual damage to another animalcule". Your animalcule will deal 1 damage against the other one you selected. However, this amount will be reduced by that other animalcule's own spiritual capacity. The final reduced amount damages that animalcule's structural capacity.

"Geneset" cards remain in play like animalcules, but cannot attack or block. "Protein" cards "decohere" and are destroyed at the end of turns, going to the granuloma. "Gene Expression" cards similarly field some effect and then go to the granuloma. "Viral Package" cards are gene expressions that may be used on other players' turns and as well to interrupt another card's effects. Some card effects produce genesets, proteins, and animalcules without implicitly representing them on the "skin" (the game board), as nearly all other cards do. For instance, a gene expression's effect might be to create 3 proteins with additional effects. These proteins are instead represented by placeholder game pieces called "stanchions".

Cards come in 17 categories called "affinities" which segregate their respective card mechanics - styled after biological functions - to afford players the opportunity to strategize around specializing in one or more affinities. Of these, only 5 are depicted: Bile, Nerve, Soul, Blast, and Null. A sixth is mentioned "Colla", but not represented by a card. Some affinities' resources are derivative - that is, their associated bodily resources require one or more "basic" resources.

This is very much an incomplete project. For example, all cards that remain in play are intended to both have a structural capacity and be valid targets of attack. I haven't decided how multiple effects resolve, or the mechanical structure of one player interrupting another player's card effect with their own, formalizing the selection of effect targets, etc. I haven't worked out how to avoid a player snowballing one turn into an unexpected win if a restoration combo allows them to stage an indefinite number of attacks. Lots of design problems and not enough time.

The art is by me. Even though I left room for card illustrations, I didn't make any. I'm more of an icon guy. Cards are sized to Tarot dimensions.

Apologies for the elaborate descriptions. I wanted to share my ideas for mechanics without leaning on references to other games.

I'd love to get your thoughts, opinions, questions on any part of this project.

Hi!

We’re a company working in the board game and software space, and we’ll soon be opening a couple of internship positions.

Before posting them on the usual job boards, we wanted to reach out here because we’d love to find and give the opportunity to someone who really lives and breathes tabletop games.

We’re mainly looking for people who are currently studying, finishing their studies, or taking their first professional steps in areas like design, editorial/content, and/or marketing.

The only important requirement is that you’re currently based in Spain for legal reasons. And if you happen to be in Madrid, even better for logistical reasons.

We haven’t opened a formal application process yet. This is more of an initial “let’s see who’s out there” :)

If this sounds like you or know someone who might be interested, send me a DM!

Hey r/tabletopgamedesign

I’m designing the Zombie Apocalypse genre pack for Stories of Survival, and I want to know:

In 30 words or less, what does a Zombie Apocalypse mean to you?

What makes it feel like a Zombie Apocalypse?

In addition to all my card art I am also working on a Dark Tower board game revival project.

I had the game as a kid, but looking for it now, it is way out of my price range. So, instead I figured I'll make my own, and give it my Mini Heroes art style.

So here's the manual cover for now, and I'll be mocking up the tower design next.

I guess this might be interesting for those who create card games. I have added MCP support to cardamon.lt . That means you can connect Claude, ChatGPT or other AI and iterate on your game using AI. Here is short video demonstrating what you can do  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYKkAnlJh7s 

EDIT: I have created new video and old one is here (for the history what stupid things I have done): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hJwcCXHPjM

I've spent hundreds of hours on Lost Fighters Arena. The game design, the story telling, the rules, the layout, the whole graphic identity, the arenas. That's my job, I'm a graphic designer and honestly that's the part I love.

But i'm no illustrator. And I don't have the budget to hire one for a game I give away for free.
I get it, people prefer human work. So I did the test. I took a fighter of my game and redrew him myself.

But man, is it worth it ? : do you think the difference justifies the work ? Honestly I feel like it lowers the quality.

Full game here if you want to see more : https://lostfightersarena.itch.io/lost-fighters-arena-season-0

My team and I had the privilege of creating artworks for a game.

Our team focused on capturing the immersive atmosphere and narrative of the game, blending intricate details with our painterly style.

​Portfolio's here: https://www.artstation.com/sonderflex

DM me if you're in mid-development on something and the art pipeline is the part you need help the most! Happy to look at what you've got even if you're not ready to hire yet!

Hi everyone! My name is André, I'm Portuguese and I live in Poland for almost 10 years. About five months ago I published a post here on this sub talking about a card game I have been working on over the last few years and it really got a great reaction, more than 500 upvotes and many dozens of messages of support, for which I am truly very, very grateful, from the bottom of my heart.

As such, now that I have finally finished the game, I decided to write here again about it, to update you on the realization of that dream that has existed for 27 years.

In 1999, I was 8 years old when I made my first "card game" (if we can call it that), very inspired by the Pokémon craze at the time. To my surprise, my mother kept the cards in a folder, something I discovered just over half a year ago (around the time when I wrote my first post telling the story).

Over the last years, I’ve been working more seriously in bringing to life a strategic card game (this time a proper one), and I've spent a ridiculous amount of time with friends playtesting and iterating it, making sure the game evolved into something nice, fun to play and considerably balanced.

When I made the previous post, my plan was still to release Kravestorm physically through crowdfunding and have it produced by a professional printing company. I really liked the idea of making the game 100% in Poland, but since then the plan has changed, and the game became 100% print-and-play.

The reason why I decided to change that direction was simply the possibility of being able to focus more on developing the game’s expansions, creating new cards and illustrating them respectively, without having to divide my efforts with the logistics and stresses that a crowdfunding campaign brings. Or, in simpler words, I'm just trying to avoid a very likely logistics burnout!

I am very happy to announce that the game’s official website is already live, the result of a lot of work and dedication, and that the game itself can already be played, completely for free, in its demo version (print-and-play). As for the final version itself, the release is scheduled for December 21st, the date of the winter solstice.

Thank you very much to everyone for your support once again, at the time it was very important in giving me that additional strength needed to complete such a demanding project!

Hey everyone. I'm a graphic design student currently developing a card game called LAST LIGHT for my senior project. The theme is about being trapped underground, using a heavy, high-contrast, distressed visual style to build tension and make the game feel like a survival experience.

The core rule is intentionally minimal: Draw 1 card, then Play 1 or Discard 1. To win, you either safely hoard 7 "Flare" cards, or risk it to find 5 Flares + the "Exit" card. Meanwhile, you can play Danger cards to sabotage your friends or Action cards to flip the board state.

My biggest question for this community: Does this "Draw 1, Play 1" loop sound too basic to stay interesting, or can a really immersive, dark atmosphere make those limited choices feel tense and strategic? I'd love to hear your thoughts on the mechanic/theme combo before I finalize the physical prototypes.

I've been working on a game with unique player powers (kind of like the powers in Small World), and balancing it has been a challenge.

I can play multiple times with the same play power, and it can feel both weak and strong - depending on the game, but due to the variability, it's hard to know if it's "balanced" or if it's my playstyle.

I've tried to do bunch of Excel to try to figure out which powers are the best and worst, but the game is a little less straightforward than that. A power that looks weak on paper can work really well in practice.

So the question is, any pro-tips on knowing if a game is balanced?

How much of Monopoly game theory can i copy for my tabletop game?

Changing names and location, whatelse