Game Card Maker

How our game card maker works

A game card is different from a collectible card. A collectible card is mostly about how it looks. A game card has to be read quickly in the middle of a turn, and the numbers on it have to make the game work. Our game card maker is designed around that. You decide what a card does, and the maker lays it out clearly so you can spend your time on the game itself.

1. You choose a card type

There are six card types, and each has its own layout. Unit cards (creatures, characters) have a cost and attack and defense badges. Spell cards put the rules text first. Item cards use an oval picture and bonus badges. Resource cards are simple and symbol-led. Event and Quest cards are made for board games, with large centered text for stories, choices and goals. You can mix all six types in one deck.

2. You set up factions

A faction is a color identity, such as Fire, Water or Shadow, or a resource type, such as Wood, Stone and Gold. You can name up to six, give each two colors and a symbol, and every card picks one. The faction colors frame the card, so players can tell what a card is at a glance.

3. You write rules text with icons

Type {fire} or {2} in the rules text and the maker draws an icon or a numbered circle right in the line. There are 14 icons, including fire, water, leaf, sun, moon, lightning, star, heart, sword, shield, coin, skull, a tap arrow and a gem. Put a word between asterisks to make it bold, which is useful for keywords. The text shrinks to fit the box, and the flavor text is added in italics when there is room for it.

4. You add art and stats

Upload a picture, take one with your phone, choose one from the Media Library when you are signed in, or paste an image address. Drag it to position it and pinch to zoom. If you have no art yet, a faction symbol fills the space, which is handy for early playtests. Cost, attack, defense, rarity, a type line and an artist credit are all optional fields.

5. You set quantities

Every card has a “copies in deck” number. You design each card once, and the deck knows that you want, say, three of this card and eight of that one. When you print, the maker repeats each card the right number of times, or you can turn that off to print each card once.

Check your deck before you print it

Under the card gallery, the deck tools show the number of different cards, the total number of cards counting copies, the average cost, a cost curve chart, and a count of cards by type. A cost curve shows how many cards you have at each cost. If everything sits at the expensive end, early turns will feel slow. If everything is cheap, late turns may feel empty. Resources are left out of the curve, so it shows the cards players actually spend resources on.

The sample hand button shuffles the whole deck, with copies, and draws seven cards. Press it a dozen times. Do you often get a hand with no resources? Is one card showing up more than you expected? It is not a replacement for real playtesting, but it is a quick sanity check.

The maker does not know your game’s rules, so it will not tell you whether a card is balanced. It helps you see and print your deck. The balancing is up to you and your playtesters.

Edit your whole deck in a spreadsheet

When you balance a game, you change numbers all the time. The Import tab lets you download a CSV template, edit your whole deck in a spreadsheet (names, types, factions, costs, text, quantities and more), and import it again. You can replace the current cards or add to them, and export the deck back to CSV at any time. Many designers keep a spreadsheet as the master copy and use the maker to see and print it.

Sizes, styles and double-sided cards

Choose from six sizes: poker (2.5 × 3.5 in), bridge (2.25 × 3.5), tarot (2.75 × 4.75), mini (1.75 × 2.5), square (2.5 × 2.5) and jumbo (3.5 × 5). Text scales for small cards so it stays readable. Four styles change the whole look: Fantasy with parchment and gold, Sci-Fi with dark panels and neon lines, Modern with clean color bands, and Cartoon with chunky outlines.

The deck has one shared back with your title, tagline, faction color and an emblem. If a card needs its own back, for a unit that transforms or a double-sided quest, fill in the back title and text on that card, and that card prints with its own back.

Printing cards for playtesting

• Home printing sheets: cards at actual size on Letter or A4. The maker works out how many fit on each page for your card size, adds cut guides, and can print the backs mirrored so they line up when you print double-sided and flip on the long edge.
• Print-ready PDF: one card per page at the exact card size, repeated by quantity, with an optional 0.125 inch bleed. This is the file to send to a print shop or a print-on-demand service. Check their own bleed and size rules first, since they differ.
• Images: PNG or JPG at 150, 300 or 600 DPI with the resolution embedded, one card at a time or as a ZIP.
• Deck sheet: one image with all your cards in a grid (up to 10 columns by 7 rows per sheet) plus one back image. Some tabletop apps read grids like this, but each has its own requirements, so check your app before you rely on it.

A cheap way to playtest is to print on ordinary paper and slide each card into a sleeve in front of a spare playing card. Print one test sheet first to check how your printer lines up the two sides. Colors are shown in RGB, so printed colors can look a little different.

Tips for designing readable game cards

• Put the most important thing first. Players should see the cost and the name before anything else.
• Keep rules text short. If a card needs a paragraph, consider splitting its effect across two cards.
• Use icons consistently. The same symbol should always mean the same thing.
• Use keywords. A bold word such as Flying is faster to read than a full sentence.
• Use color to sort cards. A faction color helps players find cards in a hand or on a table.
• Playtest with plain art first. Placeholders are fine. Fix the rules before you commission artwork.

A note on ownership

This tool is not connected to any game publisher, and the sample cards are original. Only use artwork, names, rules and symbols that you made or have the right to use. Please do not copy cards from existing games.

About this game card maker

What we store, and for how long

• If you only design and download: your cards stay in your browser and are not saved on our server.
• If you save a set: the card text, settings and image addresses are stored under a random public link. Guest sets are removed automatically after [180] days without changes. Sets owned by logged-in users are kept.
• Your images: an image from your device is not stored on the server unless you are signed in and it is saved to the Media Library. Otherwise it works on your screen and in your downloads, but is left out of a saved set.
• In your browser: the key that lets you edit a saved set is kept in your browser’s local storage on your device.

Anyone with a public link can view and print a set, so do not save a deck you want to keep secret. Shared set pages are set not to appear in search results.

Honest limits

A set can have up to [200] different cards. Layouts are fixed for each card type, so there is no free-form layout editor. Images from other websites can show on screen, but they only go into downloads if that website allows it, so use images from your device or your own site. The tool checks nothing about your game’s rules or balance. We would rather you know that now than discover it at your first playtest.