Stepping Stones

Stepping Stones is a three-player compendium trick taking game that is designed to be "my first compendium game" for players familiar with trick takers, but unfamiliar with compendium trick takers.

A compendium game plays over many hands (in this case, 12) during which players compete to have the greatest success at each of multiple (4) objectives. Those different objectives have varied rules, so it's like four mini-games whose scores add up to the final.

Visit the BGG page to read more!

I drew these faux-mosaic style illustrations (as with every design I've made) WITHOUT using AI. I went phsically, on my feet, to Phipps Conservatory here in Pittsburgh and sat in their beautiful Japanese garden with real paper and a pencil and sketched the box cover scene. I sketched lanterns and squatted under trees to get the right viewing angle on the koi pond. It was lovely. And then I came home and began making the digital mosaic, which meant drawing all those meticulously imperfect polygons BY HAND one by one for weeks. WEEKS. I absolutely regretted it somewhere in the middle, but it was too late to turn back, so I had to just keep drawing shapes. The more you zoom in, the more you can actually feel the tendons in my hand flexing against my wacom pen and the nib scraping on the tablet. But damn if those cherry blossoms aren't real pretty.

Anyway, all this to say, fuck AI, and I hope you can enjoy shuffling these cards with the knowledge that real sunlight and trees and real happy Pittsburgh fish and a real human's hand went into this card art.

Speed Run

Speed Run is still relatively light on the compendium scale, but more complex than Stepping Stones. Normally in compendium games, there is one player (known as the declarer) who picks a contract for the hand and only their score counts. So, with 3 players in a 5 contract game, it would take 15 hands to play a full game. However, in each hand of Speed Run, all players are the declarer making it possible to complete 5 contracts in 1/3 the time. Additionally, there are Pass and Redo contracts which can provide players a chance to avoid doing a contract with a bad hand or redo a previous contract that they did not score well in. Finally, there are rules for a medium length and long length game.

Visit the BGG page to learn more!

The card art is a nod to video games from the nineties and early 2000s. Some references are more deep cut than others, but maybe you can guess which game characters we drew our inspiration from.

I fell in love with the earthworm astronaut and I really want to make stickers or maybe a pin of him as a potential stretch goal for the campaign. If you are reading this and you'd like to suggest a possible stretch goal or similar, shoot me an email or use the little chat box in the bottom corner!

Find more from Ryan here:

Podcast about all things trick taking

Ryan's rules-teach videos

Discuss trick taking games and find groups playing online in PCIO rooms (including playtesting Ryan's WIP games or trying out the virtual version of these two finished games).