Final Chakra Crusade Updated

Chakra Crusade

Objective: 

The objective of Chakra Crusade is to align all 7 Crystals in their designated Chakra Rows by the end of the game to reach total enlightenment and harmony. 


Components:

  1. Action Card deck
  2. Color coded crystals (7 per color, total 35 crystals)
  3. Game board

Set up: 

This game can be played with 3-5 players

  1. Each player chooses:
    • 7 crystals of their chosen color.ย 
  2. Then players set 1 of each crystal in the start positions of each chakra path.
    • Start positions – are marked with a lotus symbol
    • Chakra Paths – are the color-coded rows leading toward the center.
    • Aligned Chakra position – are the central spaces marked with each Chakraโ€™s symbol.
  3. Then shuffle the deck of cards, and deal 3 cards to each player. Then set the deck near the board.ย 

Start of the game: 

  1. The calmest player goes first. Each player briefly states why they believe they are the calmest; the group decides.
  2. Turns proceed clockwise.
  3. Each player must play 2 actions on their turn.
    • Actions may be:
      • Off-card actions (no card needed)
      • On-card actions (action on the card)
    • After playing cards, place them face-up in a discard pile.
    • At the end of your turn, draw until you have 3 cards in hand.
    • If the deck runs out, reshuffle the discard pile.

Actions include 

OFF card actions: 

  • Moving: You may move ONE crystal ONE space forward.
  • Meditation: Discard one card you dislike, and pick a new card from the deck.ย 

ON card actions: 

Movement:

  • Flow state: Move ONE of your crystals 2 spaces forward.
  • Chatarunga Down: Move one of your crystals back 1 space. Then move a different crystal forward 2 spaces.
  • ย Energy surge: Move 2 different crystals 1 space forward each.
  • Friendly Flow: Choose one player. That player moves ONE of their crystals forward 2 spaces
  • Counter Flow: Reverse the direction of gameplay (if going clockwise, now go counter clockwise)

Sabotage:

  • Blocked Energy: Move ONE target opponentโ€™s crystal back 1 space.
  • Skipping yoga: Skip any playerโ€™s turn (choose your target)
  • Still Mind: everyone moves ONE crystal 1 space backward except YOU
  • Vinyasa: Swap one of your crystals with one opponentโ€™s crystal.

Defense (can be played anytime)

  • Shield of calm: Use this card to ignore any setback that has been played against you.ย ย 
  • Karma: Deflect a sabotage, and the player who tried to sabotage you gets the setback themselves.ย 

Important: Crystals can only move forward in their current Chakra Path. They cannot switch Chakra Paths .


Beyond first round:

Your goal is to place 3 crystals into the center aligned spot of each Chakra Path.

Aligned Chakras cannot be affected by any card once earned.


Winning and Losing:

  1. The player who has aligned all 7 Crystals in the center Chakra spots first has to announce:ย 

โ€œI am Enlightened!”

They win immediately.

If multiple players complete their seventh token on the same turn, all are enlightened and share the win.


Documentation for The Jammers!!

  • Game rules
  • The Jammers!
  • Madison Hurst
  • Objective
  • Make the most valuable jam recipes by combining various fruits and spices before the deck runs out! The player that reaches 30 points in recipe combos wins!
  • Ideal player count is 3-4.
  • Materials Needed
  • Strawberry cards
  • Blueberry cards
  • Peach cards
  • Vanilla spice cards
  • Mint cards
  • Basil cards
  • Ginger cards
  • Special action cards 
  • Jammer Scoresheet and pencil (to add up points as you go)
  • Setup
  • Shuffle all the deck of cards 
  • Deal 5 cards to each player
  • Place the remaining deck in the center of the table, face down (this will be the draw pile) 
  • Right next to the draw pile will be the discard pile (these cards can face up when once a pile starts to form)
  • The person who was last to eat a piece of fruit recently will go first! (if you can remember the tallest will go)
  • The turns will go clockwise 
  • Play overview
  • A players turn will consist of three phases (draw phase, action phase, and cleanup phase
  • Turn Order
  • THIS IS THE START OF YOUR TURN
  • Draw Phase:
  • Draw 1 card from the draw pile
  •  Action Phase:
  • Choose one of the following actions:
  • Complete recipe
  • If you have a the correct spice and fruits then create a Recipe Combo from your hand (e.g., โ€œBlueberry blissโ€ needs blueberry  + vanilla)
  • Recipe Combos stays in front of you for final scoring.
  • Action card
  • Play an action card then discard it 
  • Discard a Card
  • If you donโ€™t like what you see, you can get rid of a card that is in your hand to the discard pile. 
  • Cleanup phase:
  • After every player’s turn, you must have 5 cards in their hand.
  • There must be 5 cards in your hands, no more and no less
  • This goes for action, fruit, and spice cards.
  • Write down how many points you have after your turn (if possible)
  • For example: You pick up 1 card (6 cards in your hand). Then, play a recipe combo which includes three cards played. Leading you to pick up 2 cards from the draw pile.
  • For example: You pick up 1 card (6 cards in your hand). You still donโ€™t see a recipe combo or action card that you like. You will then discard a card of your choice, and that would get you back to 5 cards. 
  • ***See more details in the action card key about how it affects the hand limit
  • YOUR TURN IS THEN DONE. 
  • Reshuffle
  • If the deck runs out of cards, reshuffle all of the cards except the completed recipe combos from each player. 
  • Recipe Key:
  • Strawberry jam (strawberry + cinnamon) 4 points
  • Blueberry bliss (blueberry +vanilla) 5 points
  • Peach sunrise (peach + ginger) 4 points
  • Mixed berry (strawberry + blueberry + mint) 6 points
  • Perry jam (strawberry + peach + basil) 7 points
  • Tri preserve (strawberry + peach + blueberry + any spice) 7 points 
  • Berry sweet (two fruits + cinnamon) 3 points 
  • Earthy herb (any fruit + basil) 4 points 
  • Action Cards:
  • Bunny attack: choose a player and they have to discard one fruit (player that discard their fruit must pick up a card from the draw pile)
  • Farmers market: draw two cards next turn instead of 1 and place card the 2nd card that was not used under the draw pile. Cards can be played the following turn.
  • Fruit poacher: steal 1 random card from another players hand (the player that was stolen from must pick up a card from draw pile)
  • Another man’s trash, is another man’s treasure: swap one fruit from your hand with one from the discard pile 
  • Jam Packed: Whatever recipe combo that you create on your turn will be doubled (tri preserve is originally 7 points, but would be 14 points with the Jam Packed card)
  • Win/Lose
  • The Game ends immediately when the player reaches the set number of JAM points (30) or over, and will be the TOP JAMMER!!!!!
  • Tiebreakers:
  • Most completed recipes
  • Most fruits used overall
  • If still tied, both share the victory as co JAMMERS!!
  • Photos of:
    • the game when setup 
    • details of the pieces
    • any process photos โ€“ making
    • any design iterations โ€“ changes to the board, cards or pieces
  • An overview of changes made
  • An overview of changes to make
  • Your thoughts and lessons learned from play testing

During the course of this design, it went through many reworks. From fixing confusing directions, card size, amount of cards in each category, and changing how a players turn would work. I am pretty proud of what I reworked and testing to see how fluid the game is. I strived to make the cards cut as neat as possible which was tedious, but I am proud of committing to that. Moreover, the game became more fluid once I changed the hand limit to 5 cards (no more or no less). My last change was adding more spices to give people more chances to make recipe combos, and adding a Jammer scoresheet.

Final Project: Spooky Detection Agency

For my final project I deiced to make a board game based on ghost hunting. This was the 3rd attempt for a game like that’s, as previous iterations were tough for users to understand. This one has a better quaily board, colored chacarer tokens and updated rules. I wanted to dye the players, however rit dye was extreamly messy and didnt adhere well, so alcohol based markers were a subsitute, otherwise all pewioces are 3-D printed or cardstock.

Final Thoughts About Boxed In

Boxed In came from wondering what a competitive version of Shut the Box might look like. Giving each player their own tray made the game immediately more interesting, and most of the development came from quick playtests with ChatGPTโ€”mainly experimenting with doubles penalties, pacing issues, and ways to keep the game from stalling out.

We found a few solid ideas, like the Stalemate Release rule, but I never quite reached a final version that felt fully balanced. Still, the process paid off. A lot of what we learned while testing Boxed In directly shaped the design of Reactor 21, which grew out of the same experiments but landed in a much stronger place.

In the beginning, both players are just getting their boards started. You roll, claim a few easy tiles, and see what kind of shape your board is taking. Itโ€™s mostly about opening things up and seeing where the numbers fall.

As the game settles in, youโ€™re making small adjustments based on what the dice give you. The doubles effects add a little movement, but most of the time youโ€™re just trying to keep your board flexible and avoid boxing yourself into a corner.

Toward the end, there are fewer open spots and each roll gives you a couple of decisions to think through. The Stalemate Release rule helps keep things moving, and youโ€™re mostly trying to keep the board workable long enough to reach your goal.

The boards were purchased directly from Amazon. I’ve attached a screenshot of the product photo from the website.

And this is a screenshot of how my playtest with ChatGPT looked on my screen…

Week six questions

There was a game that I was attempting to develop at the same time I was starting out with A Game About Colors… This other game was called Boxed In.

Boxed In came from wondering what a competitive version of Shut the Box (the classic pub game) might look like. Giving each player their own tray made the game immediately more interesting, and most of the development came from ongoing playtests with ChatGPTโ€”mainly experimenting with doubles penalties, pacing issues, and ways to keep the game from stalling out.

We found a few solid ideas, like the Stalemate Release rule, but I never quite reached a final version that felt fully balanced. Still, the process paid off. A lot of what we learned while testing Boxed In directly shaped the design of Race to 65, which grew out of the same experiments but landed in a much stronger place.

Original Rules โ€” Boxed In (Early Concept Version)

  • Each player has their own tray with tiles numbered 1 through 12, all starting unclaimed.
  • On your turn, you roll two dice.
  • After the roll, you may claim:
    • either die result (if unclaimed),
    • or the sum of the dice (if unclaimed),
    • or both individual numbers and the sum, if all three are unclaimed.
  • You could not affect your opponentโ€™s tray; the game was mostly a race, not a conflict.
  • Doubles rolls were allowed to trigger bonuses for the roller or penalties against the opponent, but these were still very loose ideas at this stage and not yet defined.
  • First player to claim 10 tiles on their own tray won the game.
  • If a number was already claimed, you simply couldnโ€™t take it; the roll did nothing.
  • There were no locked tiles, no cursed tiles, no drain effects, and no stalemate rule.
  • The flow was straightforward: roll โ†’ claim whateverโ€™s free โ†’ try to reach 10 tiles before the other player.

In the beginning, both players are just getting their boards started. You roll, claim a few easy tiles, and see what kind of shape your board is taking. Itโ€™s mostly about opening things up and seeing where the numbers fall.

As the game settles in, youโ€™re making small adjustments based on what the dice give you. The doubles effects add a little movement, but most of the time youโ€™re just trying to keep your board flexible and avoid boxing yourself into a corner.

Toward the end, there are fewer open spots and each roll gives you a couple of decisions to think through. The Stalemate Release rule helps keep things moving, and youโ€™re mostly trying to keep the board workable long enough to reach your goal.

Week five questions

Top two ideas, each in only one sentence

A Game About Colors, More or Less is a deduction game where players compare subtle color differences and guess which card shows more or less of a chosen color.

Reactor 21 is a cooperative game where two players work together to stabilize unstable reactors by managing cards, preventing meltdowns, and keeping the system balanced.

Here are my five game ideas that revolve around the idea of collecting:

Red Flag Rally is a team party game where players collect โ€œred flagโ€ personality traits from fictional characters and work together to decide whose imaginary date is the least disastrous.

After Hours Heist is a collaborative strategy game where players collect tools and inside intel to pull off a late-night break-in, making risky choices that raise tension but require the whole group to commit.

Secret Signals is a social deduction game where players collect coded clue cards and have to share information in subtle, slightly flirty ways to reveal who in the group is actually on their team.

Flirt & Fumble is a cooperative chaos game where players collect โ€œeffort pointsโ€ by attempting mildly awkward or bold social challenges written on cards the group draws together.

Moonlit Market is a mysterious team game where players collect forbidden items from a nighttime bazaar and must negotiate with strange NPCs and each other while keeping certain temptations in check.

Week four questions

5 game ideas that revolve around a single theme of of your choice. if your theme is time traveling ducks, then all five ideas need to be different games that utilize the same time traveling ducks theme any idea off theme will not earn a point. continue to follow the idea formatting rule:

I accidentally already covered this topic in week 3, regarding games revolving around color. One of the ideas morphed into the original concept for A Game About Color, More Or Less. The original rules of that game were as follows:

A Game About Colors, More or Lessโ€ฆ โ€” Version 1 Rules

SETUP

  1. Place the 12ร—18 game mat in the center. It shows rectangles A, B, C, and a color key.
  2. Shuffle the 48-card Solid Color Deck and place it color side up on rectangle A.
  3. Leave room for each player’s personal pile and a discard pile.

GAMEPLAY

  1. Youngest player goes first, clockwise afterward.

Player Turn Sequence:
a. Move the top two cards from Pile A: one to B, one to C, both color side up.
b. Roll the six-sided die to determine the active color using the board’s key.
c. Compare the two revealed color sides on B and C, declaring which is more/less of the rolled color.
d. Flip both cards to reveal numeric values for C, M, Y, R, G, and B.
Higher number = more. Lower number = less. Matching values = Good Luck (automatic win).
e. Correct or Good Luck โ†’ player keeps both cards. Incorrect โ†’ both to discard pile D.
f. Turn ends; next player draws new cards to B and C and repeats.

END OF ROUND AND WINNING

  1. Round ends when all 48 cards from Pile A have been used.
  2. Players count only cards in their personal piles and record scores.
  3. Shuffle all cards and start a new round.
  4. A game can only be won at the end of a round. First to reach 50 total points wins.

Example of Gameplay

Itโ€™s Mayaโ€™s turn, and sheโ€™s the active player.

She takes the top two cards from Pile A and places one on B and one on C, both color side up.

She rolls the die and gets a 2.
According to the color key, a 2 means she has to compare the cards for magenta.

Maya looks at the two color swatches on B and C. After studying them, she decides that the card on B looks like it has more magenta than the card on C. She says, โ€œB has more magenta.โ€

Now she flips both cards over to check their values.
Card B shows a magenta value of 58.
Card C shows a magenta value of 42.

Her guess was correct, so she takes both cards and adds them to her personal pile.

Her turn is over, and the next player repeats the same steps with two new cards.

Week three questions

5 game ideas that involve collaboration use the following formate : [Game name] is a [category of] game in which [the players or their avatars] [do or compete or collaborate for some goal] by [using tools the game provides them]

Prism Teamwork is a cooperative board game in which players work together to fix broken colors by using color tiles to match and complete patterns on the table.

Color Detectives is a team guessing game in which players try to figure out which color is missing or out of place by using clue cards and talking it out together.

Rainbow Builders is a collaborative building game in which players work as a team to create a big rainbow by placing colored blocks or cards in the right order.

Shade Garden is a shared strategy game in which players take care of a garden that changes colors and help each other mix the right shades using simple color-mixing cards.

Color Path Adventure is a cooperative path game in which players try to travel across a map by matching colors and using special color cards to help teammates move forward.

Week one questions

  1. In your opinion what should every game have? Why do you like your favorite game? While chess is not my favorite game, I believe everyone should have a chessboard and know how to play. My current favorite game is Sid Meier’s Civilization VII on PS5. I think it provides an unlimited amount of game building, roleplay, warfare, and resource management. It’s also visually stunning and a pleasure to play.
  2. List the games youโ€™ve played and currently play. Chess, checkers, spades, hearts, rummy, poker, blackjack, AD&D, MLB the show, Civilization VII, monopoly, clue
  3. Can you apply the three act structure to your favorite game? In the early part of a Civ game, youโ€™re mostly laying the groundwork. You settle your first cities, explore the area, meet your neighbors, and get a sense of the kind of position youโ€™re in. Itโ€™s a relaxed phase where youโ€™re figuring out what the map is giving you. Once you understand your surroundings, you start leaning into a direction that fits your civ and the situation. Your map, your neighbors, and your strengths all start pointing you toward a natural plan, and your choices feel a bit more intentional. Later on, youโ€™re committed to a win condition and working to bring it home. The focus becomes keeping your progress steady, tightening your approach, and making sure no one else gets ahead of you before you finish.
  4. What is itโ€™s pacing and how long do you find yourself in each act? The pacing is decided in the game setting. I prefer the marathon setting because it allows me the most immersive experience.
  5. When coming up with ideas where do you find you start, with the metaphor or the mechanic?ย I start out with the metaphor.
  6. Over the course of this semester, who would you like to collaborate with and why? I’d like to collaborate with as many of my classmates as possible. I’m much older, and I don’t know what they know. I like the ideas coming from younger people.

Playtest for Catan

Was it fun? Absolutely, once we understood the rules.

What were the player interactions? The player interactions were timid at first, as we were figuring out rules and strategy. Once we all got a grip on what we were doing, we were all enthusiastic about starting over and going to war. That’s when the interactions became a lot more fun.

How long did it take to learn? The gameplay rules were very straightforward. The strategy took a bit longer to figure out… Perhaps 20 minutes…

What was the most frustrating moment or aspect of what you just played? No frustration at all.

What was your favorite moment or aspect of what you just played? Once we all figured out some strategy, it was time to go to war. That was fun.

Was there anything you wanted to do that you couldnโ€™t? Nothing comes to mind. I feel like nothing was working. That feels perfect to me.

If you had a magic wand to wave, and you could change, add, or remove anything: I wouldn’t change a thing.

Is this a game you would play again? I purchased the game on my iphone immediately after class.

Analyze the game using the 3 act structure. The opening act would be the setting up the economy based on initial decision on allocation resourses. The second act involves the majority of the fun, where each player goes on a land grab with decisions on how to proceed against adversaries. The final act involves thinning out the weak based on who played their cards right, as the strongest race toward victory conditions.

What are the collaborative and or competitive aspects of the game? I found the entire game to be collaborative.

What is the gameโ€™s metaphor and which of the gameโ€™s mechanics standout? Catan is a strategic resource game where players grow their settlements by collecting, trading, and converting resources into roads, buildings, and points. The engine building mechanic of the game is what stood out to me.

Reactor 21 Visual Elements

The process of developing the graphics was AI guided, mostly because illustration is more of a weakness than a strength to me, and I couldn’t find a photo showing what I was looking for.

Unless stated otherwise, any AI image generation was done in ChatGPT.

I started by generating a reactor image that I could use as the base of the design, with both a normal and ‘post-apocalyptic’ vibe…

I decided to go with the post-apocalyptic vibe. This was the prompt that generated the image:

Prompt used:
A striking daytime photo captures a nuclear power plant beneath a brooding sky, with thick black smoke rising from two towering cooling structures. The scene is punctuated by a smooth-surfaced reactor building, a lattice communication tower, and flashing emergency vehicles, all framed by grim, muted grays and occasional vivid reds, enhancing the dramatic atmosphere of the image.

I knew I had to design red, yellow, and green markers for the gameplay, and I ended up with this AI graphic:

Prompt used:
Three small, glossy plastic game tokens arranged in a row on a dark matte background. Each token is embossed with a simple symbol: a red token with a nuclear hazard icon, a yellow token with an exclamation warning icon, and a green token with a leaf eco-symbol. Soft, even studio lighting, clean shadows, photorealistic texture, top-down view.

I decided that the box should look like the dark reactor photo wrapped around the box. I also included a deck of cards with the reactor wrapped around the box.

Prompt:
A realistic product-photography scene on a solid black background. A large rectangular board game box titled โ€œREACTOR 21โ€ lies flat on the table. The box uses a military stencil font for all text. The artwork on the box is a dark, dramatic image of a nuclear power plant with cooling towers emitting thick black smoke and emergency vehicles below. The box is 18 inches long and dominates the left side of the frame.

To the right of the box is a standard-sized Bicycle-style deck of playing cards, standing upright. The deck has the same nuclear-reactor artwork framed inside the classic Bicycle-style layout, but with the title โ€œREACTOR 21โ€ in a military stencil font instead of the Bicycle logo. White borders and the familiar tuck-box shape are clearly visible.

In front of the box are multiple small game tokens, each exactly 0.5 inches in diameter, arranged closely together: four red tokens embossed with a radiation symbol, six yellow tokens embossed with an exclamation point, and five green tokens embossed with a leaf symbol. The tokens are thick like premium bingo chips. All tokens are proportionally tiny compared to the 18-inch box. Lighting is soft, even, and neutral to ensure the red, yellow, and green tokens are equally visible without glare.

The overall image has a dramatic but clean studio aesthetic, with sharp details, accurate object proportions, and a cohesive, cinematic tone.

The actual game board was composed mostly in Photoshop, and it will get a separate post as it was a completely different process.

Final Thoughts About Reactor 21

Reactor 21 changed quite a bit as I tested different versions of it. The basic idea was always thereโ€”two players trying to keep a failing reactor stableโ€”but it took some back-and-forth to figure out what actually made the game interesting. Early versions had the right intention, but some of the mechanics didnโ€™t create the amount of teamwork or pressure I wanted. The game felt like it needed a bit more structure around how instability spreads, what happens during a meltdown, and how the players recover from setbacks.

Most of the improvements came from simply seeing how people reacted to certain moments in the game. Some rules felt too loose, and others were a little unclear in how they resolved. Adding the Nuclear Waste pile, tightening the meltdown rules, and clarifying how cards move between piles helped everything feel more intentional. The goal was always to keep the experience focused on communication and shared decision-making, and those adjustments moved the game in that direction.

During all of this, ChatGPT was helpful for keeping things organized. Any time I adjusted a rule or tried a different way of handling a reactor event, I used ChatGPT to help rewrite the sections cleanly, make sure the terminology stayed consistent, and compare versions so nothing got lost. It also made it easier to step back and look at each revision as a whole instead of just patching small pieces. The mechanics themselves still came from testing and intuition, but having a tool to structure everything made the development process a lot smoother.

Reactor 21 ended up feeling more balanced and readable because of that steady cycle of testing, revising, and tightening the language around the rules.

The three acts of the game are as follows:

Act 1 – Getting your footing

The game starts off pretty gentle. Youโ€™re drawing cards, placing them where they fit, and getting a feel for how the reactors behave. Most cards go somewhere without much trouble, and the token tracks are empty, so nothing feels dangerous yet. This is where you learn the rhythm: keep totals tight, stabilize when you can, donโ€™t waste options.

Act II – Things start heating up

Now the reactors are filling up, and suddenly every card matters. A placement that was easy earlier now feels risky. Youโ€™re choosing between Instability and Meltdown more often, and both choices actually hurt. The Nuclear Waste Pile kicks in and you start to feel the deck thinning out. This is where the team talks things through, plans moves, and tries to stay one step ahead of the system.

Act III – Hold it all together

By the end, everythingโ€™s tense. One bad draw can end the whole run, and every card feels like it might be the last piece you needโ€”or the thing that breaks the grid. Youโ€™re trying to lock down those last stabilizations before either track fills up. When the final reactor hits 21, it feels earned; if the system blows, itโ€™s usually by a hair.

(Final thought created with the assistance of AI, using my input)

Final Thoughts On A Game About Color, More Or Less

As I refined A Game About Colors, More or Less, the color system became one of the most important aspects of the design. Early versions relied on fully saturated colors, which made the comparisons visually clear and, in many cases, too easy. During testing, it became obvious that players could identify the stronger or weaker color channels with very little effort, which reduced the level of deduction the game was meant to encourage.

To address this, I shifted the palette to include added black (K) values between 30% and 70%. Lowering saturation created a more subtle, more challenging set of swatches. Colors that once felt predictable became more ambiguous, and players had to make more thoughtful evaluations based on small differences, rather than relying on obvious saturation cues. This adjustment aligned the visual experience more closely with the intentions of the mechanics.

Throughout the development process, ChatGPT was used as a collaborative tool to help build, refine, and organize the rule set. It played a role in structuring the language of the rules, maintaining consistency across versions, documenting changes, and evaluating how each update affected clarity and player experience. It was also useful for keeping a clean version history and ensuring that revisionsโ€”such as the shift to a reduced-saturation deckโ€”were incorporated accurately and consistently. The core design decisions remained my own, but ChatGPT helped make the documentation process more efficient and reliable.

This combination of iterative testing and structured rule development resulted in a color system that better supports the gameโ€™s deductive, perception-based gameplay.

Act 1 – Getting a feel for the deck’s color language

Early on, players are mostly just getting acquainted with how the deck moves. They make a guess, flip the card, and start noticing which kinds of shifts catch their eye โ€” a bump in brightness, a little pull toward red, or a change in saturation that didnโ€™t seem obvious at first. Itโ€™s basically a warm-up for the eyes, where players start realizing that the game isnโ€™t about naming colors; itโ€™s about noticing how they behave.

Act 2 – Learning what actually matters in a swatch

Once everyone has a few cards in front of them, they naturally start leaning on simple bits of color theory โ€” whether they mean to or not. Some players pay attention to value first, because brightness jumps out. Some start tracking saturation because muted colors hide shifts better. Others zero in on hue and notice how small moves between neighbors (like teal to blue-green) feel trickier than big jumps. This is where players start building their own internal system for judging the cards, one clue at a time.

Act III – Stay consistent with the system you’ve built

The game doesnโ€™t suddenly get more intense toward the end โ€” it just asks you to stick with whatever approach youโ€™ve developed. By this point, players have their own way of reading the swatches, and the last part of the game is about trusting that instinct. Maybe you’re watching for low-saturation curveballs, or maybe you’re checking how the brightness sits against the last few cards you saw. Itโ€™s steady, calm decision-making โ€” more about consistency than pressure โ€” and the satisfaction comes from seeing how well your eye held up across the whole run.