📖 Creator Wiki

CardForge lets you build a complete card game as pure data — no code. The same engine that runs the built-in games runs yours, so anything the built-ins do, you can do too: cards, dice, stats, status effects, gear, board tracks and three play surfaces (a card table, a battle arena, or a board race).

Create a game

From the home page, open Your Games and press Create your first game (or ＋ Start Building in the hero). You land in the creator, which is split into tabs:

Tab	What lives here
Basics	Name, players, starting score/lives, dice, character draft, starting hands
Decks & cards	Your decks and every card in them, including each card's rules
Board	An optional tile track for board-race games
Rules	Game-wide rules that fire on triggers
Winning & turns	How the game is won
JSON	Import/export the raw definition (admins)

Everything autosaves as you edit. Press Play at any time to try it — the engine can run a full game against AI opponents, so you get instant feedback.

The mental model

A game is a GameDefinition: some settings, a list of decks (each holding cards), optional stats / statuses / gear / a board, a set of rules, and one or more win conditions. When something happens (a card is played, a turn starts, a die is rolled…) the engine checks every matching rule and runs its actions.

The Basics tab sets the frame of the game.

• Description — a short blurb shown in the library and Quick View.
• Min / Max players — 1–10. Solo games are allowed (min 1).
• Starting score — every player begins with this many points.
• Starting lives — set to 0 for a game with no lives. Losing your last life eliminates you.
• Hand limit — the most cards a player may hold (0 = no limit). Drawing over the limit forces a discard.
• Card reveal time — how long a flipped custom card stays on screen. Leave blank to hold it until the player presses Continue; set a number of seconds for a timed reveal (decks can override this).
• Age rating — All ages, Teen (13+), or Adult (18+). Rated games carry a warning wherever they're offered and are hidden from players too young for them (based on the date of birth in their profile).
• Play surface — purely visual; the rules are identical either way:
  • Card table — the classic felt table with seats.
  • Battle arena — fighters face off with big health bars (great with stats).
  • A board surface is chosen automatically when you add a board track.
• Table die — the default die for Roll the die actions (2–1000 sides; individual actions can override it). Tick opening roll-off to decide who goes first by the highest roll.
• Character deck — pick a deck to use as a hero draft: at game start every player chooses one card from it. It sits face-up by their seat, its actions run once as starting boons, and Hero has tag… conditions can read its tags.
• Starting hands — deal N cards from any deck to every player at the start. Add as many deals as you like.

A game needs at least one deck. Each deck has:

• Name and colour (the card back / crest colour).
• Recycle — when on, the discard pile is reshuffled back in when the deck runs dry. Turn it off so a deck can genuinely run out — this is what makes deck runs out wins and endings possible.
• Ordered — deal from the top in author order instead of shuffling (for quest / campaign decks that must play in sequence).
• Reveal time — override the game-wide reveal time for this deck (0 = always wait for Continue).

Cards

Every card can carry:

• Name — shown on the face.
• Suit (♠ ♥ ♦ ♣ or none) and Rank (A, 2–10, J, Q, K, Joker, or none).
• Value — a number used by rules (e.g. move forward by the card's value).
• Count — how many copies of this card are in the deck.
• Tags — comma-separated labels (e.g. trap, fire). Conditions like Card has tag…, Equipped gear has tag… and Hero has tag… read these. Tags split on commas only — write fang, gear, not fang gear.
• Art — an optional sprite name to animate the card's character on the table.
• Actions — what happens when the card is played (see Rules & actions). A card's actions run through the same rule engine as game-wide rules.

A rule says: when something happens, if a condition holds, do some actions to some players. Rules live game-wide (Rules tab) or on individual cards (their actions fire when the card is played).

Triggers — when a rule fires

Trigger	Fires when
cardPlayed	a card is played
cardDrawn	a card is drawn
turnStart	a turn starts
turnEnd	a turn ends
handEmpty	a player's hand becomes empty
deckEmpty	a deck runs out of cards
diceRolled	a die is rolled
tileLanded	a player lands on a board tile
tilePassed	a player passes over a board tile

Conditions — the "if"

Add one or more conditions (they're ANDed together). Highlights: Always, Random % chance, Card has tag / suit / rank, Card is a Joker, Card / roll value ≥ ≤ =, matches the previous card (rank/suit/value), Hero has tag, Player stat ≥ / ≤, Player has status, Equipped gear has tag, and Landed tile is….

Targets — who it happens to

The acting player, the next / previous player, all players, every other player, a random other player, a chosen player, the leading player, or the lowest-scoring player.

Actions — what happens

Cards & hand: Draw cards, Draw (choose the deck), Take the discard pile, Discard random card(s), Discard entire hand, Swap hands, Steal / Give a random card.

Score & turns: Gain / lose points, Set score, Miss turn(s), Reverse turn order, Take another turn.

Stats & survival: Gain / lose / set a stat, Lose / gain life, Shield (protect), Eliminate, and Wins the game immediately.

Status & gear: Apply / clear a status effect, Equip this card, While equipped: boost a stat, Lose equipped gear.

Board: Move forward / backward, Move to tile number.

Group decisions: Hold a vote (see below).

Other: Roll the die, Show a message.

Most actions take an amount which can be a fixed number, the played card's value, a player stat, or a die roll. Actions flagged as harmful are blocked by shields and can be gated behind a die roll.

Votes — put it to the crew

The Hold a vote action pauses play and asks every eligible player to vote, then uses the result to drive more actions. There are two kinds:

• Vote on a player — everyone picks a player; the one with the most votes becomes the target of the vote's follow-up actions. Use it for a Werewolf-style airlock (vote → Eliminate) or a party "who's most likely?" (vote → Gain points). In those follow-up actions, choose "the voted player" as the target — that's whoever won the vote.
• Vote on an answer — everyone picks from a list of answers you write, and the winning answer runs its own actions. Good for group decisions like Divert power to: Shields / Engines / Life Support.

Setting	What it does
Who votes	Everyone, or everyone but the acting player
On a tie	No result (nothing happens), or pick at random
Vote for self	Player votes only — whether a voter may pick themselves

Each answer, and the player-vote winner, runs an ordinary nested list of actions — so a vote can lead to anything any other action can do.

Online play currently collects votes one player at a time; a simultaneous secret ballot is on the way.

These turn a card game into an RPG. All optional.

Stats

Define named stats (e.g. hp, atk) with an initial value, min/max, and an icon. Actions can add / subtract / set them; conditions can test them; and a game can be won by reaching a stat value. A stat with zeroEliminates knocks a player out when it hits 0 (HP-style).

Traits give stats RPG behaviour:

• soaks — this stat is a damage buffer that drains before the stat it protects (armour over HP). It folds into the protected stat's health bar.
• rollBonus — added to the player's die rolls (Dexterity-style).
• damageBonus — added flat to stat-damage this player deals to others (Strength-style).

There's a one-click RPG Stat Pack preset (HP / Armour / Attack / Dexterity / Strength) wired with sensible traits — enable it and retune freely.

Statuses

Define status effects (e.g. poisoned, stunned) that last a number of turns. A status can skip the afflicted player's turn, protect them, or tick a stat each turn (poison drains HP, a blessing tops up score). Apply and clear them with actions; test them with the Player has status condition.

Gear

Mark a card action as Equip this card and it moves into the player's gear zone when played. Gear is sorted into four slots — shield, left hand, right hand, armour — derived from its tags. Gear can:

• carry passive rules via Equipped gear has tag conditions,
• boost a stat while equipped (While equipped: boost stat…),
• be a win condition (Collect N pieces of gear).

Players can discard their own gear on their turn from the 🎒 gear panel.

Add a board to make a board-race game — pawns move along a tile track and the play surface switches to the board view automatically.

• Length — how many tiles the track has.
• Tile types — define each kind of tile with a name, icon, colour, a weight (how often it appears when the track is generated) and its own actions (what happens when a player lands there). Landing fires tileLanded rules; passing over fires tilePassed rules (but not the tile's landing actions).
• Exact finish — when on, overshooting the final tile bounces you back by the excess (like Snakes & Ladders' home square).

Move players with the Move forward / backward and Move to tile number actions — for example, move forward by the played card's value. Win with First player to reach the final board tile.

Tip: keep the first and last tile a safe type so nobody is trapped at the start or bounced off a hazard at the finish.

A game can have several win conditions — the first one met ends the game.

Win condition	Ends when
Reach a score	a player's score hits the target (default 50)
Reach a stat value	a chosen stat hits the target
Empty your hand	a player plays their last card
Collect N of a rank	a player holds N cards of the same rank
Collect N pieces of gear	a player equips N pieces of gear
Reach the final tile	a pawn reaches the end of the board
Last player standing	everyone else is eliminated
Highest score on deck-out	a chosen deck runs dry — highest score wins
Lowest score on deck-out	a chosen deck runs dry — lowest score wins

The deck-out wins need that deck's Recycle turned off so it can actually run out. Last player standing needs some path to elimination (lives, a zero-eliminates stat, a draining status, or the Eliminate action).

Test it thoroughly

Press Play and let the AI take the other seats — a good game should reach a winner across player counts without stalling. Watch for rules that never fire (a mistyped tag), damage numbers that are too swingy, or decks that recycle when you meant them to run out.

Share it

From the library's Quick View you can Share a game (creates a link), Open a copy, Export the JSON, or Play online with friends. Player-created games are always free to play; only the built-in games can cost coins.

Age ratings

If your game involves alcohol, or words / dares of an adult nature, set an Age rating on the Basics tab so it's shown only to players old enough for it.

That's the whole toolkit — start from a blank game or Open a copy of a built-in to see how a finished one is wired, and build out from there.