Posts Tagged ‘game’

Love Letter history and overview

31st July 2022

I love Love Letter, the popular card game by Seiji Kanai. It still amazes me how a game with just 16 cards can be so entertaining and exciting.

It sold millions of copies, is available in 28 languages, has 30 different official versions (at least one is published every year) and dozens of fan-made re-themes. It started the whole microgame craze which made lots of people design very small games.

To celebrate its 10th birthday this year I have made two videos.

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Reviewing popular game systems: Piecepack, Green Box of Games and Pyramid Arcade

7th May 2019

I’ve played 105 different games in February this year. I didn’t buy or borrow 105 games, though. I only bought 3 game system with which I played all those games. And I could have played hundreds more.

A game system is not a single game but a set of items with which you can play multiple games. A deck of playing cards is a well-known example of a game system, or dominoes, or marbles. I love the versatility of playing cards, they are so small and can play hundreds (if not thousands) of games, so I was interested in others. A game system is also a great tool for game designers to help invent new games.

I bought 3 of the most popular game systems: a Piecepack, the Green Box of Games and Pyramid Arcade (with Looney Pyramids aka Icehouse Pieces) and tried them out.
This is my review of them. I looked at the quality of their components, the games you can play with them, their rulebooks and the design of each system.

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The Micaya Deck, my own set of (extended) playing cards

12th April 2019

I have recently designed my own deck of playing cards, the Micaya Deck.

I’m not a designer but I always loved playing cards. My interest in them is mostly from the playing aspect, I love the idea of a game system and the versatility of them. And I love unusual designs.

The Micaya Deck has 4 more suits and 7 more ranks than a standard deck and has a clear and minimalist design.
I initially only designed it for myself as a fun hobby project, but have opened the designs up on MakePlayingCards’s marketplace where anyone interested can purchase them.

In this blog post I’ll explain some of my design choices and the history of the Micaya Deck.

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CSS Playing Cards

23rd August 2010

Some days ago a friend of mine told me that he would be interested in using pure CSS playing cards for a personal project. A few people have tried CSS playing cards before. But I wasn’t satisfied with any of our findings, as ideally they should be semantic, accessible and scalable, they shouldn’t use more markup than necessary and should be pleasing to the eye. So, I was up for the challenge and created them myself …
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