Mini Roguelike Hand-builder
A Design Competition by Dextrous
The goal of this competition is to make a Roguelike Hand-builder card game that plays in under 30 minutes, and uses cards only (up to 120). Unlike a traditional deck builder with shuffling and randomness, a hand-builder offers players a bit more control and long-term planning. On the other hand, a Roguelike game is different every time you play. Can you pair that hand management sense of control with interesting variability in an action-packed package?
Prize pool:
- Lifetime Pro Subscription of Dextrous
- 45 min 1:1 meeting with Pam Walls
- 1 year pro subscription to Dustin’s Designer Den
- 30 min marketing meeting with Double Summon Games
- 1 year premium subscription to Pitch2table
- 1 hour rulebook feedback from Paperweight games
Key dates:
- Submit a game on the submissions page (now until November 21, 2026).
- Round 1 Peer Review: peer review of sell sheets to determine top 10 designs (Nov 21-28).
- Round 2 Dextrous Review: Gil and Doug review top 10 sell sheets to determine top 3 finalists (Nov 28-30).
- Round 2 Final Judging: Pam, Gil & Doug play the 3 finalists, announce a winner (Dec 6).
How it works
This competition is a friendly jam where designers can practice going through the steps of designing, and making a sellsheet and rulebook and giving and receiving feedback.
After you submit your game, Round 1 Peer Review will start on 21 Nov. You’ll be randomly assigned 5 other designs to review and you’ll have 1 week to do it (reviews finish on 28th Nov). You will read your 5 assigned games (their descriptions and sellsheets) and score them based on:
- Mechanics - do you think the game will work functionally?
- Fun - do you think the design will be engaging and provide ongoing replayability?
- Uniqueness - do you think this design could stand out in the market?
Please note that scoring your peers is a requirement and you can’t progress to the next round otherwise.
There will also be the chance to give other designers some general feedback.
The 10 highest-scored games will progress to Round 2 where the Dextrous team will pick the top 3 games for final Judging. In Round 3, the top 3 games will be played and reviewed by Pam Walls, Gil and Doug. We will determine a winner and leave some feedback. The winner gets to pick any 2 items from the prize pool, then 2nd place picks 2, then 3rd place gets the final 2.
Submissions
Submit the following info and files on the submissions page. These will be visible to all other entrants.
- Basic info: A brief description & cover image.
- A One-Page sellsheet (PDF): This is to summarise the gameplay and unique selling points of your game.
- Rules (PDF): This should be 1-3 pages long and fully explain how to play the game. Note this is what we’ll be working from when we judge the game in Round 2, so we’d recommend getting it tested before you submit.
- Print-and-Play File (PDF): This pdf should be formatted as 9 cards per page (no bleed) with cropmarks so we can easily print and cut.
Join the discussion for this competition
If you’d like to brainstorm ideas, trade playtests or chat to other designers doing this jam, you can do it here on our Discord server. We have a section for designer discussions and a dedicated channel for this competition.
Research
If you’re not familiar with hand-builders or roguelikes, check out these examples.
Hand-builders:
- Century Spice Road
- Lewis and Clarke
- Concordia
Roguelikes:
- Slay the Spire board game
- Mini-Rogue
- Balatro
Features of Hand-builder games:
- Your hand is your deck
- there’s no random shuffling like a deckbuilder.
- You add cards (typically actions) to your hand as you play
- You get to choose when to play cards and the timing matters in terms of creating strategic sequences or ability combos etc.
Features of Roguelike games:
- Procedural generation (ie randomised maps, enemies, items etc. rather than set scenarios)
- High stakes (ie permadeath or near-permadeath)
- ‘Runs’ in the sense that each time you play the game it will be a bit different. *For the purposes of this competition we’re treating roguelike/roguelite as the same thing. Meta progression is fine (desired even). We’re not going to be too strict on definitions here.
Rules
- You can only submit one game (this includes co-designs sorry).
- Your game can have up to 120 cards.
- If you want to require common household components like a pencil, paper to score, or a coin or standard die that’s permitted.
- You must be at least 18 years old to enter unless you’re co-designing with a legal guardian/parent who can represent you.
- Any designs submitted must be original works that do not infringe on any intellectual property, and given this, any design you submit remains your intellectual property.
- Rules should fit on 1-3 pages.
- Don’t use AI artwork - you won’t be judged on the quality of your graphics. Please use simple drawings or stock art.
- No NSFW content please.
- This competition involves a significant amount of peer judging and feedback. This means a few things:
- You must have a Dextrous account to participate.
- You must-* participate in the Round 1 Judging peer judging (it’s a core part of this competition and not optional).
- You need to do your best to judge other entrants as fairly and consistently as possible. If we think this is not happening, we will step in and make adjustments as needed, but we want to acknowledge there will be a fair amount of luck and subjectivity here too.
- Please try to keep feedback constructive rather than negative.
- Other people will be able to see your submission files. This means you should only submit a design that you are happy for the public and other designers to see. While we think it’s unlikely that it would happen, we can’t protect your idea from being stolen.
(This is of course, the same risk you take when taking your game to any public space like a convention, but we just want to underscore that you are submitting at your own risk in this competition).
- This is our first time running a competition/jam, so we might have to change something on the fly - please bear with us as we figure this out!
Disclaimer
We may feature game submission data and files on our website, Discord and social media. If you don’t want this to happen please let us know by contacting dextrous.is.fun@gmail.com.
Good luck and may the cards be ever in your favour!