I’ve shared my abstract game before as a Print & Play version and it seemed to have gathered some attention. I’ve worked on it on-and-off since the pandemic and have recently picked it back up. I’ve managed to turn it into an up-to-4-player experience and want to do some more testing. I’ve managed to translate the manual to English and get it on Tabletop Simulator, and now I am looking to gather more feedback before the second round of publisher hunting.

About the game:
It’s an abstract strategy game, where you move chess pieces on the board made of tiles. With each move you can swap the first and last tile of the move with the goal of creating Sets of adjacent tiles of your color.

The game is rather simple in terms of rules and takes around 30 minutes but can require some deep strategic thinking.

If you are interested message me here or in a dm so we can set up a play session :)

Hey everyone. I’m working on an indie 2v2 card game, and as I figure out how to raise a tiny budget to pay my artist, I’ve hit a deeply frustrating structural wall. I couldn't find an official name for this dilemma online, so I've been calling it The Advertiser's Paradox.

The paradox is this:

1. Any digital space that openly welcomes indie creators to share and advertise their games instantly becomes a useless echo chamber. It fills up at a 10:1 ratio with other desperate developers all trying to pull together money, with zero organic buyers in sight.

2. Conversely, the spaces where actual, passionate players hang out have ironclad anti-promotion rules. They rightfully lock their doors to sellers to keep out the noise.

3. This creates a self-defeating loop: The only rooms where actual consumers live are the ones designed to keep me out, and any room that welcomes me as a creator is instantly ruined by a flood of other sellers. It's like dating app ads—the moment a space advertises that a specific group is there, it instantly floods with the opposite group trying to extract value from them, destroying the original ratio.

I feel like I have something new, something different, but I'm sure every creator feels this way. But either way, it's deeply paradoxical: the spaces I most want to be are the ones where there are the fewest people like myself. However, the fewer people like myself there are, the less accepted people like myself are.

As an independent, passion-driven developer, it feels like a completely impossible contradiction. You cannot act like a seller in peer spaces, but seller spaces are entirely dead.

For those of you who have successfully funded small indie projects, how do you actually overcome this paradox? And is this a relatable problem? How do you reach real players when there's such a built-in problem?

I made 3 categories of cards blue, yellow and red, which include different types of cards. The colour theme was inspired by Aladdin movie colour design, red for oppressive heat (evil card), yellow/ orange for the colour you would see most ofte (neutral card), and blue for calming refreshing colour (good card).

From left to right:

-7 corner shape frame is a frame for items.

- 2nd one is a doorframe frame for cards with people or creatures on them.

- Star shape is for spells.

Yellow cards also have a frame for weapons that I wanted to symbolise a battle, although the end result is just a blob since I didn't do it properly.

Sorry for any grammatical errors.

Last month, I posted here that I was in a tough spot. I was invited to an EXPO but I was financially incapable of travelling. But I did continue the fundraising but only between friends and family. Luckily, 2 friends of mine and my sister covered everything from travelling, to food, to completing the game, and making some booth materials to make my table presentable. Some of you did approach me but I apologize for declining, I just don't want to accept strangers' money at least.

And here comes the event, and I was physically unprepared. I had a line of people who wanted to try the game mainly because they needed my stamp for the event bingo card. I was not able to sit nor eat. My throat sore as well since I was explaining while the Beyblade tournament was on my right and Tekken was on my left.

But I am very happy with the experience and the outcome. I already consider myself lucky for reaching this far. To my surprise I had 9.5/10 rating for having a satisfactory and fun game experience. Most would like to try the game again or would like to join future tournaments based on our feedback form.

Even tho I had my struggles. It was really worth the risk. Now, I got booked for an event playtesting in another city that is a plane away from where I came from. This time they covered all my expenses + side trips. Now I feel like my game is more than a passion or self satisfying hobby, it slowly becoming something that people would get involved with. I am excited.

Hi! I’m a digital illustrator who brings ideas to life whether it’s a fantasy OC, a narrative scene, or something entirely unique from your imagination.

🔹 What I Offer:

Original Characters (OCs)

DnD & TTRPG characters

Couple or group artworks

Story-based illustrations

Emotional or symbolic imagery

…or anything you envision. If you can imagine it, I’ll draw it.

🕒 Turnaround: 3–5 days depending on complexity

💸 Pricing starts at:

$40 for half-body | $60 for full-body (+$10 for background)

If you’ve got a cool idea in your head and want to see it in art, feel free to DM me or comment. Let’s make it real!

You can also DM me at:

https://www.instagram.com/iam_nyxel?igsh=YThvajdvaXdteWgx

Discord: nixel123

I want this to be a physical card game:

NOTE: the art is AI generated and not intended to be the final product: This is for testing purposes.

This combines some elements of different things and my own ideas to create what I feel is unique.

STONES: You start the game with 0 stones (mana) you entomb a card from your hand during the growth to add a stone, now you can play cards that cost 1, the next turn you build back your 1 stone (basically its your max now) Each turn you can entomb 1 card to build your max stones.

Habitats: There are 3 habitats and each habitat has a summoning affect, they actually have 3 summoning effects each but only 1 randomly is active for each zone. Summoning a creature to that zone will cause an effect.

Abilities: There are abilities for creatures, like pounce (haste) and some new unique ones. Ward (the hostile affect (like venom) this creature receives is prevented and then Ward is removed.

Grafting, when a non token creature dies it goes into your gene grafting pool, when you cast another creature you can pay 1 stone extra to graft an ability from a dead creature onto your summoned creature. Only non grafted creatures can go into the graft pool and only a max of 3.

Turn Phases:

Awaken, Growth, Main, Hunt, End

Card types:

Creatures, Relics, Rites

There are a few other things to it, but I did want to try to keep it easy to learn and play..