$5
Discord / Beta Supporter
- Supporter role in the official Discord
- Beta access to every monthly update
- Behind-the-scenes design posts
- Early community votes on spell concepts & art
Coming to Kickstarter
ArcoMage
No luck of the draw — your wizard knows their book.
A strategy spellbook duel where every spell you’ve prepared is always ready. No shuffling, no mulligans, no mana flood. The only luck in ArcoMage is your opponent’s.
View Reward Tiers Read the Pitch
Campaign launches soon · backers get beta access ~3 months before public launch.
Why this game is different
Thousands of spells — eventually
The card system is data-driven from day one. Every spell is a layered SVG: the illustration is the only image; titles, costs, rules and flavor are text data. New spells get added by writing one JSON file and generating one illustration. Tens of spells at launch, hundreds within months, thousands as the campaign hits stretch goals.
A learning neural-network AI
An AlphaZero-style self-play network is the in-game opponent for solo play and the balance engine. It plays thousands of games against itself nightly, learns which spells dominate and which get ignored, and reports back. Solo play won’t feel like a puppet show; it learns the way you play.
Truly competitive — balanced by data, not vibes
Most card games balance with patches by feel. We balance with measured win-rates from thousands of self-play matches. Over-picked spells get nudged down; never-played spells get nudged up. One-click JSON edit, instant card re-render, measurable shift in the next 100 games. Data-driven, not vibes.
GPT multiplayer when humans aren’t around
When a real opponent isn’t online, you duel a GPT-powered opponent who plays in character — trash-talks, taunts, breaks character only to congratulate a clever combo. The server-side bridge is already live at arcomage.org for the early browser PoC.
Real spell effects + voice
Three hundred and eighty particle effects ported to the browser through Proton give spells real presence on the board. Spells can say their name through ElevenLabs TTS — “Fireball!” — adding character without the anime-card-game absurdity.
Guilds & community (more than a Discord)
Backers at the Guild Founder tier get a guild Discord, a roster page on the site, and a Guild Stone visible in-game. Team play for 4–8 players is a stretch goal we’re excited about — but we’d rather ship the core right than promise six modes day one.
Cards built from data, not Photoshop
Every spell’s art comes from our reference-anchored generation pipeline; every number on the card is editable JSON. A balance change ships as a one-character edit and re-renders instantly. Here’s a sample of the first six finished cards:
The remaining 74 cards in the launch deck are in active production. Backers get every card in the launch deck plus every expansion released for the first year.
Reward tiers
Pledges are additive — a $50 Archmage backer gets everything in the $5, $10, and $20 tiers as well. Each tier’s perks layer on top of the ones below.
$10
Limited Founder Portrait
- Everything in the $5 tier
- Limited Founder Portrait avatar — a hand-painted badge that marks you as a Day-One Founder, forever
- Exclusive Recycling Center / Junkyard land for your kingdom board — unique to early backers
$20
Ghost Spell Pack
Nine ghost-themed spells: 2 Epic, 3 Legendary, 3 Rare, plus a bonus Common (Ring of Salt). Here’s the first preview of the painted card art — four of the nine, freshly off the pipeline:
Five more cards in the pack arriving before launch — Graves of the Innocent, Haunted Locket, Cemetery Moth, Haunted Portrait of a Library, and Haunted Hourglass.
- Everything in the $10 tier
- All nine Ghost Spell Pack cards unlocked at launch
- Cosmetic Ghost card frames and ethereal book icons
Most popular
$50
Archmage Founder Pack
The core tier most backers want. Includes the full game and the founder cosmetics that mark you as an early believer.
- Everything in the $5, $10, and $20 tiers
- Full digital game on launch (Windows / Mac / Linux + browser)
- Founder cosmetics — card frames, board cosmetic, profile border
- Bonus spell content + early access ~3 months before public launch
- Founder Spell Chests — sealed thematic spell bundles, opened at launch and milestone moments
- Special spellbook art reserved for Archmage backers
- Strong “Founder” in-game positioning
$100
Developer Circle & Kit
- Everything in the $50 tier
- Strategy guide (PDF + HTML)
- Private dev-chat access on Discord
- Behind-the-scenes design notes & balance journal
- Desktop-version source code only (see disclosure below)
Source-code scope: the desktop client source code only. Does NOT include: the browser version, the mobile app, server / backend code, the marketplace, company assets, the full spell library, or any rights to the business. The desktop client is yours to read and learn from; everything else stays proprietary.
$300–$500
Guild Founder
The reliable path to a Guild Stone. Stones are rare on purpose — we keep the supply low so guilds stay big and Discord servers stay social, not 100,000 empty servers talking to themselves. If you want a guild without grinding for one, this tier is the shortcut.
- Everything in the $100 tier
- Elite Guild Founder badge in-game and on the site
- All launch spells unlocked at start
- Special AI opponents trained against your guild’s play style
- Hosted guild Discord channel + roster page on arcomage.org
- Guild Stone — the in-game token that lets you found a guild. Otherwise only available as a very rare drop from Spell Chests.
- Giftable Founder badges for guild members
- Founder Spell Chests — sealed thematic bundles of bonus spell content, opened at milestones
Stretch goals
Real stretch goals only — things that add genuine value, not numbers for marketing optics. We’d rather ship the core right than promise six modes on day one.
- Team play, 4–8 players — coming, look forward to it. 4-player isn’t a smaller version of the 1v1 game — it’s a different game. King-making, alliances, multi-target politics. It needs its own balance pass, its own AI training, and a new spell school designed for it (multi-target spells like Redirect, Force Allegiance, Curse All Opponents). Funding the campaign brings it closer.
- Second school of magic. 16 new spells + 2 new Circles + expanded buildings at launch instead of post-launch.
- Campaign mode. A single-player narrative arc with scripted wizard duels, branching choices, and a real story.
- More factions. New playable kingdoms with their own spell schools, buildings, and lore.
- Animated cards. Subtle motion on the rarest cards — flames flicker, frost crawls, time bends.
- Printable starter decks. Physical print-on-demand tuckboxes for backers who want to play tabletop with friends.
- The 3D wizard’s room dream version. Walk through your wizard’s tower, pick spells off the shelf, sit at the desk. A long-term vision; the 2D base game ships first.
About the project
ArcoMage is the work of one developer + a careful set of AI tools. It exists because every digital card game I’ve loved eventually broke my heart in the same place: the shuffle. You sit down, draw seven, and half the time you can’t play your game.
So I removed the shuffle. Your wizard knows their book. Every spell you’ve prepared is always within reach — one click if you’ve pinned it, one keypress for the Circle that holds it, five clicks worst case if you’re still learning the book. The skill becomes which spells you practice and the order you cast them in.
The architectural decisions on this project — data-driven cards, OOP-as-API, NN-tuned balance, no pay-to-win — are all things I’d never want to compromise on. That’s why I’m funding this through Kickstarter instead of taking publisher money. You back this campaign, you get a card game built the way I’d want to play one.
Why we need your support
Most Kickstarters say “here’s a dream, fund it.” This one’s a little different. The browser game already runs. The spellbook UI already flips pages. The card pipeline already ships cards. The 380 particle effects are already ported. The GPT opponent is already live at arcomage.org. The neural-network self-play loop is scaffolded. What your pledge actually funds is the next layer:
- The neural-network training compute. Thousands of self-play games per night cost real GPU time. The data-driven balance promise is only real if the games actually happen.
- GPT API costs. The multiplayer fallback opponent + the bulk spell-illustration pipeline are real recurring bills. The first 80-card batch cost about $5; the thousands-of-spells promise scales the bill proportionally.
- Hosting + infrastructure. arcomage.org needs to handle launch traffic. Founder Guild Discord servers need hosting. The replay buffer for the NN needs storage.
- The stretch goals. A second school of magic, team play, campaign mode — each takes a full balance pass and weeks of focused work. Stretch funding pays for that focus.
- Time. One developer with AI tooling means ArcoMage ships when it’s right, not on someone else’s timeline. Your pledge buys uninterrupted weeks of building, not divided attention.
You’re not funding an idea. You’re funding the next chapter of a game that’s already real.
Risks & honesty
Kickstarter asks every campaign to be upfront about what could go wrong. Here’s the real list.
- Solo developer. ArcoMage is one person + AI tooling. This means it ships when it’s right, not on the day a marketing department picked. Backers should expect honest progress updates, not optimistic ones.
- Server-dependent gameplay at first. The AI opponent and balance engine run server-side. If the server is down, the game can’t play matchmaking. We mitigate by hosting on redundant infrastructure and committing to multi-year post-launch service. If the lights ever go out for good, we’ll ship a self-host client release so the community keeps playing forever.
- The neural-network balance loop is novel. The architecture is well-understood (AlphaZero, DeepStack, LoCM); the practical work of tuning it for a CCG is the part we’ll iterate on most after launch. First-pass balance is human-authored; the NN refines it once we have real play data.
- If under-collected, we ship smaller. A funded campaign at the base goal gives us the launch deck and core multiplayer. Stretch goals only land if the stretch funding lands. Refund policy: digital backers will be refunded if we materially cannot deliver the base game; physical backers refunded for unshipped physical goods.
FAQ
Is this a digital game or a tabletop game?
Digital first. The base experience is the desktop + browser game (vs the AI, vs GPT, and eventually vs other humans). Printable tabletop decks are a stretch goal.
Will there be microtransactions or random card packs?
No. You buy ArcoMage once. The launch deck is what you get; balance patches are free forever. Expansions (new schools, new Circles) are paid DLC at fair prices — never random packs, never pay-to-win.
When does it ship?
The Kickstarter funds the final 3–6 months of polish, server capacity, and (if the print-deck stretch goal hits) physical fulfillment. Digital backers get beta access ~3 months before public launch.
How does the AI actually work?
An AlphaZero-style network — one policy head, one value head — trained by self-play. Two snapshots play each other; the winner’s weights are promoted; the loser becomes “black” for the next batch. After every batch, a balance dashboard shows which spells got picked most and which got ignored, so we can nerf and buff with evidence instead of guesswork. The headless sim runs thousands of games per hour on commodity hardware.
Is this AI slop?
No. AI tooling helped us build the system — generating card illustrations at consistent quality, drafting the spell-design prompts, training the balance NN. But the design (the spellbook UX, the anti-pay-to-win ladder, the hex-footprint rules, the cost curve, the spells themselves) is human-designed, art-directed work. AI is the brush; the painting is mine.
What platforms?
Windows / Mac / Linux at launch (desktop client + a browser version of the same game). Mobile (iOS + Android) is a stretch goal — the desktop already wraps a web client, so a mobile WebView wrapper is a small effort with real reach. Console is post-launch.
What if the campaign doesn’t fund?
Then no charges are made — that’s how Kickstarter works. We’d regroup, take what we’ve already built (the cards, the spellbook UX, the GPT opponent, the browser PoC) and look for another path to ship.
Back ArcoMage on Kickstarter
If a strategy card game without the shuffle sounds like the game you’ve been waiting for, pledge a tier above. Every backer is a Founder — portrait, badge, and all.
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