Zap Spells Legends - Card Game

Dawid Mielcarek and I set up a design studio called Tempting Fate Games and started with the hardest possible first product: an original card game, rules included.

We built the concept, the mechanics, the full rulebook and worked examples, then designed the cards, fronts and backs, and the visual world around them. The part that changed the project was the AI engine we wrote alongside it, which played the game against itself and reported which cards were quietly ruining it.

More than fifty thousand simulated games later, balancing stopped being an argument between two designers and became a number we could both read. The engine kept running while the rules kept changing, which is the only reason the deck settled as fast as it did.