Game design is an art that thrives on creativity, and one of the most effective ways to foster that creativity is by imposing limitations. These restrictions can be an incredibly powerful tool for generating innovative ideas and will often push you to “find the fun” within a condensed play space. Recently, we’ve taken on the challenge to design a series of tabletop games that only involve adding a deck of cards to existing classic games like chess or dominoes. Here’s how and why embracing limitations has transformed our approach.

The Value of Constraints in Game Design

Limitations force you to focus. When you’re working within a smaller set of resources or rules, your creative energy is channeled into making the most of what you have. Instead of being overwhelmed by infinite possibilities, you’re given a clear framework within which to innovate. Constraints can also:

Encourage Resourcefulness: When you’re restricted in the materials, mechanics, or themes you can use, you’re compelled to think outside the box.
Streamline Development: Limitations provide boundaries that help keep scope manageable, making it easier to prototype, iterate, and test.
Drive Innovation: By narrowing the field, you’re more likely to come up with novel ideas that wouldn’t arise in a completely open-ended process.
Build Unique Experiences: Games designed under constraints often feel distinct and memorable because they’re shaped by unusual combinations of elements.

Designing Games Around Classic Boards

One of our current projects involves creating a series of games that add a custom deck of cards to classic board games, transforming them into entirely new experiences. (And yes, we are still developing video games. Go check out the Steam page for LIMYN.) For example, we are reimagining chess with a card-battling twist in a game called Sylvan Tactics: each piece on the board represents a unit with unique abilities and stats derived from its corresponding card.

A prototype card for our board game, *Sylvan Tactics*, which is limited to a chess board, chess pieces, and a single deck of custom cards.

This approach leverages the familiarity of classic games while adding fresh layers of strategy and depth. By limiting ourselves to using existing boards and pieces, we can focus our energy on crafting mechanics and card interactions that feel both intuitive and innovative. These limitations also make the games more accessible, as players already understand the base rules of the classic board game and likely already have access to the board and pieces. All that is needed is a small deck of cards to transform the play experience.

As a side effect, this also makes playtesting and iteration extremely simple. We know there are some components of our game that are immovable. We can’t change the board or pieces of chess, but in many ways that is a positive thing for playtesting. We only ever need to change the text or symbols on a limited set of playing cards that we can print at home. Everything else can sit in a box ready for the next round of playtesting.

Types of Constraints to Consider

When designing a board or card game with limitations, you can define constraints in several ways:

Component-Based: Limit yourself to a specific set of physical components, such as a standard deck of cards, a chess board, or a handful of dice. For our series, this means focusing on the classic boards and augmenting them with a deck of cards.
Theme-Based: Choose a narrowly defined theme and build your mechanics around it. For instance, designing a game where players role-play as woodland animals in a tactical battle forces you to align mechanics with thematic storytelling. (This is part of the theming for our remix of chess that we will cover in a future post).
Mechanic-Based: Focus on a particular type of interaction, such as area control, deck building, or resource management, and explore it in depth.
Time-Based: Create a game with a strict time limit for development or gameplay, such as a game that can be played in 15 minutes or one designed in 48 hours. This one helps a lot in getting you to playtesting faster. Testing and iteration are key to finding the fun. You want to “fail fast”.
Audience-Based: Design for a specific audience or player group, such as children, educators, or hardcore strategists. This narrows the tone, complexity, and accessibility of your game.

Case Study: Chess with Cards

Let’s dive a little deeper into some examples from Sylvan Tactics.

One of the earliest challenges we ran into was with health tracking. Sylvan Tactics shares some general mechanics with games like Magic the Gathering where players have to track their health and the status of several other cards that are in play. Dice, counters, and tokens are very common in Magic. If we wanted our game to have player health, how could we do that without dice or resorting to pen and paper? Cards, of course! If you are familiar with card games like Regime or Star Realms you might have seen a similar solution.

We don’t have a finalized design for what our card health trackers will look like, but they will likely be similar to the solutions found in these games.

But what about card states or damage to individual cards? Again, similar to Magic, we can use rotation/position of the cards. Either 90 degrees, 180 degrees, or even face down to indicate specific states.

We also have the chess pieces themselves to work with. In Sylvan Tactics you place Rooks, Bishops, or Knights in pairs. One of those piece types is placed on the chess board, and the other matching piece is placed directly on the card that it represents. Now, the position of the piece on the card can be used to represent state or we can even lay the piece down sideways to make the state easier to identify. In my case, a piece laying sideways on a card indicates a “wounded” character.

With these limited mechanics we are able to create a fairly large possibility space without complicated extra components or a cluttered game board.

Tips for Designing with Limitations

The first prototype for *Sylvan Tactics*

Start Small: Begin with a simple, well-defined limitation and expand only if necessary.
Prototype Quickly: Use paper, pencils, and other simple tools to test ideas without committing to expensive or time-consuming components. Our first few playtests were with hand-cut cards from cardstock.
Iterate Often: Playtest frequently to see how your ideas work within the constraints and refine based on feedback.
Embrace Imperfection: Not every idea will work, but every failure is a chance to learn and improve.
Think Thematically: Align your mechanics with the limitations to create a cohesive and immersive experience.

What are you waiting for?

Designing games with limitations is not just a creative exercise—it’s a powerful method for advancing your skills as a designer. By working within constraints, you’re forced to make deliberate, meaningful choices that can lead to innovative and elegant mechanics. If you’re looking for inspiration, consider taking on the challenge of reimagining a classic game by adding a custom deck of cards. Or even just changing the rules. No new components or cards required! What will you come up with?

In the coming months we will be sharing more insights into our design process for our chess card-battling game, Sylvan Tactics. Follow us on Bluesky or Instagram.