After releasing DeckHand, a deck-building card game, I felt the need for a short break from the Kickstarter and self-publishing grind. Yet, my passion for game design quickly drew me back, as I deeply enjoy the creative process. In this article, I share the journey — both rewarding and challenging — behind the second instalment of DeckHand: Race for Infamy.
Many small games
Before starting anything big, I challenged myself to create a two-player, 18-card game for Button Shy Games. This format imposes strict limitations, but I felt confident I could overcome them with some elbow grease and creativity (how naive I was). I explored numerous ideas and themes: magical islands, time travel, lycanthropy, werewolves, dungeon crawling, pizza, and witches brewing potions. In this article, I’ll walk you through my design challenges. As you follow along, you may catch a glimpse of my (degrading) mindset as I moved through prototype after prototype.
Magic moving Islands
Imagine islands connected by bridges, with players spending resources to build connections. Each island rotated to represent resource storage and altered bridge configurations. The reason for failure: the idea sounded cool, but the mechanics were only half-baked and difficult to bring to life.
Lycanthropy
Lycanthropy in a medieval town: players played characters in their human form and tried to transform their opponents into their animal side by attacking them. The game was positional, played on a square grid, with resources and a day-night system. Reason for failure: the spatial mechanics were not enjoyable. Only 2 play test were sufficient to throw it away.
Untitled Dungeon Game
A textless competitive dungeon crawler where both players fought monsters and created reactive character chains (parties) that rotated your cards to produce (positional) attacks or coins. Reason for failure: the reactive chains didn’t offer enough variety and the player interaction was too limited.
Time Spiral
A time-traveling game where players created temporal anomalies and navigated time paths using dice (to track position and the “time” resource). It was a most promising design (and looked really cool), but I realized Button Shy’s strict “only 18 cards” format didn’t allow for two dice, so I left this one aside.
Werewolf
A werewolf/human game with three streets, inspired by the Marvel game Snap! It wasn’t terrible — my playtesters kind of liked it — but I felt it wasn’t original enough and couldn’t justify further efforts to create unique effects for each cards.
Mercandia
A merchant-themed game where players positioned their merchants beside the market (action selection) to accumulate resources and favors, aiming to acquire additional market spaces and merchants. The way to track resource and connecting to the market was wonky and the 18-card limit constrained the game’s variety, leading to its abandonment. It looked really cool though.
Al Taglio
A pizza-themed game where players placed slices by matching two ingredients. Some slices could be flipped to reveal disgusting pineapple and ham toppings. Scoring was based on the longest continuous slice, with additional bonuses and penalties. Ownership was determined by slice orientation. I invested considerable effort into making the slices delicious. Ultimately, the game lacked a certain “secret strategic sauce,” and I later discovered that Button Shy had already released a pizza-themed game, Pizza Pizza Yum Yum, in 2023. I abandoned it at that point.
Wiccan Brew
Wiccan Brew is the only game I deemed good and complete enough to publish. The table itself became the cauldron, where players tossed ingredients to brew potions and create unexpected reactions and covering the opponent’s ingredients. You can download the game for free here.
Moving on
As you can see, after 8 different attempts, I found out that creating an engaging two-player game with only 18 cards was incredibly challenging. I often felt unsatisfied with the results and repeatedly started over, spending too much time on the graphic design, hoping to strike gold with a fresh and simple idea. Eventually, I developed Wiccan Brew, which we playtested sufficiently to refine into a finished product.
However, I never submitted Wiccan Brew to Button Shy, as I didn’t believe it was exceptional and the reliance on text felt like a failure. I realized that I wanted to create a game I would be happy to play more than 3–5 times, and felt that Button Shy’s 18-card format might make that goal exceedingly difficult or pigeonhole the design into using the cards in wacky ways.
So, I decided to take a break from game design and immerse myself in some well-regarded games. I acquired The Castles of Burgundy and 7 Wonders Duel, both beloved classics, and played them when I felt like it. I also focused on other renowned titles such as Splendor, Wingspan, Race for the Galaxy, It’s a Wonderful World, Agricola, and some unique ones like Rivals for Catan.
Taking a break from creation to play these games offered valuable insights into game mechanics and design, which I hoped would inspire me for my future projects.
Returning to Familiar Waters
After this semi-failure, I decided to return to what I knew worked and what players enjoyed: deck building. However, I also wanted to address a few issues I noticed in DeckHand. Namely, turns could feel a bit long with four players, and the game was heavily language-dependent, making it difficult for a French speaker to play with English cards. Additionally, I felt the need for a coin tracker was a something I wanted to eliminate if possible.
My initial idea for this new game was to give every card a coin value (top left) and speed up gameplay by having players take simultaneous actions. To acquire new cards, I considered using a hidden auction system. Cards with interactions would be clearly marked and played during a specific phase of the round where players would take turns.
V0
The first draft focused on outlining the design, exploring ideas for auctions, resource management, and various card types.
V1
In this version, the game was still a deck builder where you bought cards using the coin value on each card (top left), then played and built them. However, after some playtesting, the hidden auction system proved less fun than anticipated, and not really solving the issue of simultaneity very well, so it was abandoned.
V3
A key turning point was adopting a drafting system for acquiring cards and simplifying the design by focusing on a resource tree. I also pivoted to tableau building while incorporating simultaneous actions. At this point, I accepted that this game would be quite different from DeckHand in terms of mechanics, and saw that as a positive change. My priority was to establish a solid, fresh foundation before moving forward.
V4
Playtesting showed that the concept worked in principle, but player interaction was limited to the draft. Adding shared goals — later called Infamy cards — was a natural improvement to enhance interaction and setup variance. A random shared goal would be revealed at the start of each round, giving players a new objective to pursue.
To address confusion from playtesters about the difference between a banner and a resource, I made the two concepts visually distinct by using completely different icons.
V5
At this point, the game reached a level of maturity where I could add more advanced features without worrying too much about upsetting the existing balance. So, I began writing down the rules, and testing out new concepts.
Several design revisions also changed the game’s look and mechanics. I realized that placing the production icons on the bottom right was problematic when drafting cards. The most important information needed to be on the left, ideally at the top left of the cards. This wasn’t just an intuition — it was confirmed through playtesting and supported by feedback from the r/tabletopgamedesign community.
Resource
During this phase of polishing the game, I discovered a great tool I want to mention: ScreenTop.gg. It’s one of the best online tools for creating a digital version of your game and playing with others. It was so convenient that I used it extensively to make quick changes and playtest the game literally minutes later.
If you’re looking for players to playtest your game, the Break My Game community is fantastic. It operates on a “I test your game, you test mine” principle, and you usually receive valuable feedback from other developers. It’s also fun to discover other people’s games — some are incredibly creative and will expand your own perspective.
Final Version
I settled on the final form of the game, which consists of 12 Infamy cards (shared objectives) and 96 Supply cards with 12 duplicates. This brings the total number of different illustrations to 96, which is quite substantial. With this card count, the game can accommodate up to 5 players.
The game is quite strategic. You have a lot to consider each turn, and since all actions are simultaneous, there’s little time for banter around the table. However, you can also take a more laid-back approach if you wish, doing the first thing that seems logical, and still do decently. Luck plays a big role.
If you are curious about the gameplay, a digital version of the game is currently free to play on ScreenTop.gg.
A Few Final Touches
Polish, design, and illustration are my main focus right now. I’m refining the illustrations, icons, colours, contrast, title, and overall presentation. My plan is to launch another Kickstarter, as I’m unsure about finding a publisher. Ultimately, I want to deliver this game in a compact, hard box at a fair price (<20$) for everyone who wants it.
Looking Ahead
As DeckHand: Race for Infamy nears completion, I hope this write-up on the game’s development journey has captured your interest. What excites me most is imagining players exploring strategies, engaging with the game, and enjoying quality time with friends around the table. That’s the most rewarding part of being a game developer!
Your Support Matters
This game has been a collaborative effort, shaped by invaluable feedback from playtesters, friends, and the design community.
If you’re interested, consider subscribing to the mailing list on the game’s website, and I’ll notify you as soon as the project is ready!
If you have any burning questions, feel free to join us on our Discord server!
