THE RESTLESS is my forthcoming cooperative card game set during the final days of human extinction. It takes place in the same creative universe as my tarot deck, The Tarot Restless. The game is a massive, meticulously detailed work of art, written, illustrated, and designed entirely by hand. It features 20 playable characters, 50 regions, as well as hundreds of monsters, weapons, spells, consumable items, and more.

See the work so far and stay up to date on development via Discord.

In brief:

The game consists of 1-4 players working cooperatively as they guide their unique characters to meet a series of random encounters. Encounters include fighting enemies, completing quests, and trading with NPCs, and so on. Encounters are arranged in 5 series of 5, with each grouping taking place beneath a random Realm Card, which uses geographical and historical lore to create new challenges or exceptions to global rules.

All characters have special abilities that help themselves or their team, and traits that enable special attacks, get more use from resources, enable unique opportunities, and so on. Every held item has benefits and drawbacks, and many items extend their benefits to the entire team.

As enemies are defeated and quests are resolved, players are rewarded with consumable items, active and passive items, spells, weapons, and armor, status effects, and reroll counters. Characters can only carry so many items, and certain items are best used by certain characters, so they must be selective and work as a team when deciding who carries what.

Therefore, the heart of the game is in the vast number of possible synergies that occur amongst items held by players, encouraging clever play, calculated risks, and self sacrifice to protect the whole of the team.

As players fight, they take damage. There are a few ways to restore health: There are rare potions that can be used in the midst of battle as well as a few costly and rare spells. Most healing will require the players to have played one of their extremely limited Rest cards. Teams begin with 3 Rest cards. Rest cards represent the number of days remaining before the world dies. When they’re gone, they’re gone.

As the campaign proceeds, players must divide their resources, strategize, make sacrifices, and prepare themselves to encounter one of the vast and terrifying final creatures that wait at the end of the world.

Three principles of designing the game:

Building concatenated item interactions among all players.

Making the players feel resourceful rather than lucky.

The game should be intuitive: played from the cards, not the rule book.

Inside the Box:

• The Rules

• 20 Character Cards

• 200+ Loot Cards

• 150+ Treasure Cards

• 150+ Encounter Cards

• 50 Rest Cards

• 50 Realm Cards

• 10 Traitor God Cards

• 200 Counter Coins

• Several Blanks for every deck.