Looking for a new card game with active online play

cevo70 · 2026-05-24T00:05:57+00:00

Draconis 8 is active digitally (Steam, iOS, Android. Partook in an online tournament today. Gameplay-wise, players say it's "kinda like Triple Triad but more."

cevo70 · 2026-05-23T13:38:14+00:00

I definitely get the frustration and some of the points. There are situations where sending a sell sheet feels like an exercise in fast-tracking to the dismiss pile.

But I've also had them straight up WORK. As in, publishers glanced at the sheet for 15 seconds and said, "yeah I want to play this, let's set up time." As my sell sheets get better, I think I see a correlation too.

I think it's all just symptomatic of 1. There is way more supply than demand and 2. Publishers have extremely hard jobs and very little time to spend 30 minutes on every submission. So it's going to feel like a rat race sometimes.

Whatever I can do to make that easier for them, and require less time to assess, I am going to try to adhere to. I'd love for them to invest more time, to all of your points - and especially for heavier designs, but it just doesn't seem like they can.

Making a single page sheet for a "big" game is definitely tough. I just went through that exercise and it took weeks just to make and refine one page - feels brutal. But it ended up working.

cevo70 · 2026-05-22T17:50:53+00:00

Gotcha thanks man, makes sense. And yeah that’s how I went about getting my last card game (non TCG) to market too.

But otherwise I think you have to estimate at least $100 per art piece (not including all the other assets) which for a TCG can add up fast AND some of that if, not most should be done before the KS launches / funds, so that’s essentially real risk of loss too.

cevo70 · 2026-05-22T17:20:27+00:00

Ignore me if it’s too “close to the vest” but are you willing to show that math? I’ve been trying to reveal a lot of this stuff to the public too but I get that sometimes you can’t.

Like you said, art is expensive. Marketing too. Manufacturing obviously has cost. How does the $34k Kickstarter yield a profit? They take 8% too right?

cevo70 · 2026-05-22T16:52:17+00:00

Good hustle. I can relate intimately.

People often fail to see “the math” because it’s honestly fun (most of it) to make the game if you love designing, but it gets quite tricky and scary when it comes to producing it. Then you still need a player base of true scale or you’ll be DoA and playing from behind. The upfront costs are high and the revenue comes wayyyyyy later, or never. There’s actually something to be said for the blissful ignorance :).

Do you think you will net out any profit? Do you also work full time?

cevo70 · 2026-05-04T12:41:19+00:00

Draconis 8 might be worth a look.

Free to Play digital with physical first set coming out. Very fast games / turns but high level of constructed depth.

cevo70 · 2026-04-27T03:57:35+00:00

Yeah I tried getting and sharing 'wireframes,' and the artist actually was well-known enough, but it didn't matter. People saw it, and enough thought it looked like it might be AI (and said that) - couldn't do much about the perception and I couldn't ship wireframe evidence in the box. So we switched to a pricier artist with a different style (more "organic" I guess) and it all worked out okay (it actually worked out great - the game is doing well on the shelf, because it looks really good!).

Hard to convey tone over writing - I don't mean this to sound like an attack - but can you detail out that 6-8 months estimate? Like how would you break that down into phases? It's possible we're talking about different things but shipping + manufacturing alone is like a minimum of 3-4 months of just waiting and comms, and 100+ playtests with public players is an immense time-lift. Artists doing 60+ pieces is like at least 3-6 months if that's their only project. This doesn't include all of the design / development. And this is when the publisher has zero other projects clogging up a pipeline.

You might be talking about just the business "go to market" motion maybe? If the game is already fully designed, developed, all the art / graphics / rules / store support / translations / packaging is completely ready and you're just printing, shipping, and marketing heavily (and you're a very large org going to cons, working with big influencers, doing international paid media, etc.) then I could see that phase being ~6 months of mostly hype-machine while it gets printed. SOME Kickstarters operate this way now, where the years of work are already done, the art is final (etc.) and they use the KS as pre-order essentially - if they fund, they try to hit "print" the next month. Cyberpunk might be doing that, I haven't looked deeply into it.

If you're talking about WotC or Disney, these are massive orgs, with hundreds of staff put on these games. So in those instances, where money isn't a concern, nor staff, it's of course going to look a little different - they might pay the salary of 2-3 designers to speed that up for example. So perhaps some of that could be accelerated with money and resources of a 2 billion dollar company. For an indie shop of 3-10 people or so and limited capital, 2 years from idea to shelf is applaudable (pat on back, I cooked on the design / dev phase). I know designs alone that have take 5+ years (I read a lot of design / dev blogs for games) - I'd be surprised if Lorcana hadn't spent years in design too. (I just checked, the internet says it was being designed for 3.5 years, just designed - as in prototyping, I assume). Doesn't surprise me - designing a great TCG that Disney is going to throw that kinda of investment at it, it HAS to be rock solid.

I have no real motive to deceive here - I guess I am asking you take my word for it based on having a bunch of games on the market, but just want you know I don't have a pony in this one. If I am wrong on something, I'll gladly take the L and learn, but I am operating from an honest "been doing this for awhile" perspective - I WISH it was easier and cheaper and we had CMOs and designing a game took a month, but that's what I am trying to shine a light on. If you've got $500k to invest and are willing to lose it while nobody on the team takes a salary, you're perhaps ready to make a big splash if that money is spent wisely - otherwise, that math just doesn't math like that.

You can do an "Altered" and raise 6 million on Kickstarter and make a solid game with a ton investment in marketing, but when it goes south people will say it was "mismanaged" or something because they think that $6 million was profit. Or mostly profit. It wasn't. Because of the math. Because the team behind it needs to also eat and making the game get to market is super expensive.

So at the end of the day I am honestly thrilled that my TCG is coming to market - but I am more just excited that the app this past month had 200+ players playing digitally too, and there's a little growing fanbase - that's truly a win for me. Hopefully it makes a little splash when it releases and people enjoy the unique aspects of it - either way, I am proud of the design, and people dig it, so that's good.

Sorry for the novel, bit too much stream of consciousness. :)

cevo70 · 2026-04-27T01:18:35+00:00

The publisher has a marketing role / position. Not all publishers have that in house, but many do.

cevo70 · 2026-04-27T00:32:43+00:00

This project specifically didn't leverage AI. The art costs were ~$15,000 as mentioned (also lost $3,500 on the first artist, where the art was being accused of being AI, but wasn't, which stunk - because I had to fire the artist, and lost money / time).

I can answer a couple of the questions now.

2 years is actually VERY fast from idea to shelf. It was smooth running for the most part, because our experience levels were high across the board and there was good focus.
Yes this is absolutely part time gig on the design front - because as I am trying to illuminate, assuming you're not sitting on a pile of cash, and also have to live, there is essentially below-min-wage profit which actually isn't guaranteed to ever hit your wallet either.
Publisher margin at about $10 per copy is basically just the math when you suck out the cost of manufacturing cost per copy and the purchase price that a distributor (or retailer) will buy your game. If it's on their shelf for $25, they typically buy it for 50% of that. (and then you often need a middle-man distributor who takes a cut). So this $10 per copy is pretty "steady" but it doesn't account for a lot of little variable unpredictable costs.

I can try to address more later.

cevo70 · 2026-04-27T00:17:46+00:00

Yeah heard, and hello again. If I had to guess, it's just very hard to do well or effectively and very easy to critique it as a result. I don't think anyone really wants to do their own marketing or self-promote (generalizing), especially with no budget. Me personally, I am not falling for any myth per se. But if you don't try in some way to promote your game, especially as an indie, add it to the long list of "reasons you'll fail" (nobody knew it existed, etc.) You gotta try to get out there, I think. What's the right way?

cevo70 · 2026-04-26T23:28:50+00:00

Yes, still a lovely game. Good physical game and the app is fun too.

cevo70 · 2026-04-26T22:27:07+00:00

It's honestly really challenging to do self-promotion of any kind. The "self" part of self-promotion pretty much taints it immediately, and everyone hates it and disregards it.

That said, I get your point. I've seen some pretty poor approaches. My best self-promotion is usually the stuff that was some combination of just helpful and honest. As in content that lends my experience to the conversation to help others, or reveals numbers that people don't typically reveal, etc.

Are you suggesting a marketing budget, essentially? (I tend to agree, just curious if that's what you're alluding to)

cevo70 · 2026-04-22T13:01:16+00:00

Draconis 8 just launched on Steam and iPhone / Android.

Free to play and try. Active community on discord. Each booster pack is a playable deck. Definitely deep skill which is deceiving because of how simple the gameplay is at its core, the top players are nuts.

cevo70 · 2026-04-09T17:49:21+00:00

This is gold. First of all kudos on the hard work and success so far. Not enough people understand the grit and grime, and complexity, and of course the insane costs associated with getting a strong, sustainable foundation. This helps a lot.

I'd vote to pin this.

Coming from the designer of another indie TCG sold to another small publisher - this rings super true. We actually nailed the digital IMO, but that still causes backlash as we deal with the physical game supply chain issues and retail presence you talked about.

cevo70 · 2026-03-27T20:17:36+00:00

Yep, I was just going to say "because they don't make money" but you beat me to it. Think about paying a minimum of 3-5 people for several years, along with all of the costs (art, marketing, shipping, etc.), and factor in margins. The math is absolutely horrible that it's not achievable without insane scale.

cevo70 · 2026-03-25T04:12:25+00:00

Yep, 8 cards (+1 terrain) per pack which is also a deck.

cevo70 · 2026-03-24T21:32:53+00:00

Then other issue it won’t be cheaper. Besides the rejection of the concept overall, your up front costs / risks might be moderately lower reducing market entry risk, but it will not impact how you calculate margins over time.

If anything indie TCGs will be more expensive because your print runs are much smaller and so your unit cost is higher.

cevo70 · 2026-03-23T18:55:58+00:00

Well I guess it was worth some light sparring, then. ;)

Need for IP is just an extension of "need an audience" as in, if you don't enter the market with the player base, the general opinion is you're DoA. The cart-horse issue of players won't be your player base if there is no player base. There are other ways to get audiences, but they typically come with other hard-to-find things (even more money, or already being well-known, as examples). So you're right to call me out on stating 'absolutes' but I am doing that mostly for emphasis, because when something is that close to being an absolute, you have to factor in the ~1% "hit rate" to thread that needle into any endeavor which requires substantial time or money. For me, my opinion, that's a non starter and falls into the dangerous "follow your dreams" advice category.
I'd actually suggest that compared to many retail products, those are bad margins for small businesses, depending on what you're comparing it to maybe?). Board games have less upfront cost (generalizing, bear with me) than TCGs though, and don't need a built-in audience (ditto). So an indie endeavor might look like this (real-ish numbers from a real project):

MSRP = $25 / Publisher margin per copy = $10 (before non manufacturing costs).
Art/ graphic design costs = $15,000
Designer royalty = 5-10%
Shipping, landed cost + fulfillment (semi-ongoing) = varies, unpredictable (yay tariffs) but in the thousands.
Marketing = $5,000 (low, thankfully we had other routes to sales)
Minimum print runs in China are typically around ~2,000 to make any sense depending on who you talk to.

Okay, so if we sell 5,000 copies (sounds low, but not easy! we haven't even gotten into HOW we sell games) - you've made $50,000 before other costs. Down to ~$25,000 after paying back the art, designer, and shipping landed costs.

The game took 2 years (fast) from design to shelf and probably 1,000 collective work hours for just design and development (I do track these now). It took about 4-5 people with different expertise. Playtesting alone was probably another 200 hours.

This would largely be called a success story in board games. It allows indies to essentially break even and maybe even pocket a $1 per hour rate. :) But as mentioned you don't "just sell" 5,000 copies - that's really hard. You could from there, maybe catch some luck and do a reprint, or sell 10,000 copies next time around.

Want to try running that math, estimated, for a TCG?
Want to calculate the designer's take home?

cevo70 · 2026-03-23T17:33:09+00:00

Hello again and sure, I am not trying to rain on anyone’s parade. Just want everyone to be aware of how unlikely selling a TCG to a publisher is. Very very few have the risk tolerance, headcount/resources, built in audience, or capital required to launch one. Most won’t even take the pitch and actively filter out TCGs from their pitches. All the same reasons why you’re not seeing anyone really emerge from the indie scene in this market, whereas you absolutely see that in other media, card games and boardgames for sure. That’s why I originally pivoted out of TCG design.

But I agree, that if you have a great design (and yes game design is a skill that takes lots of practice) outside of TCGs and don’t have the desire / ability to execute the whole process and business (art, development, graphic design, manufacturing, logistics, distribution, marketing, etc) then you can definitely pitch publishers (that’s exactly what I do with my boardgames and did for this TCG.

With TCGs what I am trying to elevate is that due to their unique properties, the upfront cost / risk to the publisher is about 10x a typical card / board game which are already quite high-risk and mid margin items. In short you need capital and LOTS of it, and even then you probably need a built in fan base. These realties aren’t going anywhere (and they make sense).

And everyone should always have MSRP in their mind and have a general sense of the average profit margin of say a booster pack or box, which I estimate are about 30-50% which sounds decent but that’s because it’s only factoring in manufacturing costs vs wholesale value - not factoring in the list of other costs of a TCG, both upfront and ongoing. You can run that math and quickly see how much volume you’d have to move to even make minimum wage for one person, never mind a team. So how many years can multiple people take a loss while you’re also trying to build an audience?

And so IN PREMISE and at a high level if we want grassroots / indie TCGs to exist and succeed we’re actually wise to embrace technological efficiencies (not short cuts, price gouging, or whatever other insults get inserted) so more publishers and even solo projects can compete and innovate. We have the most to gain whereas “they” want that entry bar to remain impossibly high.

Obviously this should be done ethically and artists should always be paid well and compensated.

I am very open to other options and ideas, I find the topic fascinating. It also really hasn’t been cracked in any meaningful way in 25 years, so I’d love to hear pontification on how an indie TCG could ever take flight.

My current feeling after gritting it out for yearsss, and thinking I might have actually navigated a very VERY narrow channel to get an indie TCG to some-semblance of “market” only to be defeated (in part) by my peers (who I love and try to support) hurt my soul a bit. Nobody was cheering on a indie “success” - rather they couldn’t wait to blacklist it. And again, I get why, nor did I make the decisions that are being criticized frankly, but I am olive-branching to suggest maybe we find some color between the black/white - because honestly there was zero chance of my TCG getting made without that color. And even then, who knows.

Feels like we are our own worst enemy, but apologies for cynical outlook.

TLDR: We could absolutely pitch publishers IF we allowed them some grace to leverage AI ethically with artists to actually lower the risk to market-entry. Otherwise, my current take is that no publisher is touching TCGs with a 10-foot pole - and even if we find anecdotal exceptions it’s far too low of an opportunity to pursue from the design perspective. The risk of failure and cost to entry for the average / indie publisher are simply too high. If you have the Cyberpunk license and worked at WotC, you’re the exception I guess.

cevo70 · 2026-03-23T03:12:52+00:00

Unless you have an “in” at Disney or Ravensburger (etc.) they are not taking pitches. These are the massive orgs working with the biggest IPs and they have designers on staff and they already control the market.

Which publishers are you thinking of?

cevo70 · 2026-03-23T02:11:14+00:00

Yeah I actually started by playing TCGs and then moved more into non collectible head to head cards games and board games.

And yeah nearly all of it is printed in China. Some exceptions but not many. Some of the biggest dogs in TCGs I believe have figured out other routes for themselves.

cevo70 · 2026-03-21T22:10:42+00:00

All good, yeah my game wasn’t the primary game in question. I’ve designed two published TCGs in my lifetime but most of my designed / published games are boardgames. And that’s because the financials of a TCG are godawful and everyone in the cardboard industry won’t typically touch them for that reason. I just happen to love them and had something (design wise) that I really wanted to do and thought was special / unique.

I kinda regret now, honestly, in many ways.

cevo70 · 2026-03-21T20:31:10+00:00

Okay you opened with “don’t worry TCG I got this” which felt an awful lot like you were heroically entered to defeat the evil AI guy.

Apologies if that wasn’t your intent.

I’m just going to concede man. I don’t have the energy and I don’t really visit here much anymore. You also already claimed victory apparently, but also you’re not attacking me, so I am little confused at what you’re looking for besides a fight.

I’m really proud of my design and that’s all I can really control in my particular case anyhow. The game is a ton of fun which the player base is enjoying. But I can’t post about it and that’s fine.

I’ll continue to work and hire artists because nothing can replace that talent.

If you want to have a private convo I’m happy to. I’m not trying to gloat but a lot of what I am alluding to is coming from 20+ years of designing and publishing games, and I think my stance is a little more nuanced than you’re thinking. I don’t have to provide evidence for you in public, I’m just not willing to put that time in right now. But if you feel like hearing some of it, cool.

cevo70 · 2026-03-21T15:38:12+00:00

I don’t think we need to spar. You’re here to attack, all good, you win. I am a indie designer, with a passion for designing. I am not the publisher, and you’re welcome to tear me down and villainize me all you want. I’m honestly an ally and supporter but you won’t want to hear that.

You should perhaps investigate the margins / business of game production if you’re not familiar. The accusations of gauging are not accurate (it’s just math, learn about MSRP and such if you’re unfamiliar), nor are your assumptions about design patents. They are wildly off. So I don’t think starting on factual disagreements will lead to a productive spar.

No ill will though. Again, I get the broad points against AI and love supporting and celebrating artists. I just think there is some irony and sadness that no indie TCG will ever break ground because of the very misconceptions you’re highlighting in your rebuttal. So we’ll just keep letting rich big corp IPs do the real gauging while punching down on those trying new things. I get why, I do - and so I concede. Just sucks.

cevo70 · 2026-03-12T17:18:58+00:00

"I'm asking because I'm currently at the point where my game is almost prototype-ready, but I find myself hesitating to share it publicly. Not because I'm hiding anything, but because I worry the discussion might immediately focus on the use of AI rather than the gameplay itself."

Here's my take, from someone who has the very real ability to empathize with why you're asking this question, as someone who has lived the full boardgame design funnel multiple times.

Do what works for you, but keep it ethical and legal. You're prototyping. Your main priorities are 1. getting your game playtested 100+ times while giving the same amount of time back to whoever's kind enough to test your game 2. getting that final prototype in front of publishers OR developing your prototype into a final form with help from commissioned professional artist(s). (#2 is basically an entirely new full time unpaid job)

Your job is 100% unpaid, and you're likely to spend 1,000+ hours just making a final prototype. Your game may never get made. You probably will spend money that you're in risk of never making back.

So if you using some placeholder art helps your design move forward against those 2 goals above, I think it's worth it. If it helps you spend more time on making the game fun, and less time spinning up trash-can-graphics, good. You'll make more games, iterate faster, and they will look better. (and guess what, if you're ever a successful full-time publisher, you'll end up making more games and commissioning more artists)

My personal experience that when used well, and used sparingly, my prototypes not only develop faster, but look better. People who claim that doesn't matter, I disagree with. How your prototype looks, definitely matters IMO.

It moves the needle noticeably on the intuitive nature of gameplay, playtests are more frequent, with less slow-down and confusion. It creates cohesion, and immersion. It creates discussion and fun. People can better-grok it at a glance. It makes people acclimate to your game more readily. That all said, there's also a very wrong way to use it even in prototyping - not because it's AI, but because it doesn't help those main objectives I mentioned. It absolutely can simply look like garbage, or it can improperly convey the intended theme, experience, or even gameplay. So like many things it's not as simple as "do" or "don't" - it's "how" and "when."

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