While reviewing and playing other people's games, I've been making steady progress on one of my own — and today feels like the right time to talk about it for the first time. The game is called Argonauts, a competitive card game for 2–4 players set in the world of ancient Greek mythology.
The premise draws from the myth of Jason and the Golden Fleece. Players each crew a faction of the legendary Argo, competing for across a series of escalating quests — from the Women of Lemnos all the way to Talos the Automaton. There are four paths to victory:
- Divinity — accumulate enough Favor from the gods to transcend mortality altogether
- Hegemony — demonstrate superior Valor and establish yourself as the undisputed champion of men
- Prosperity — amass enough Drachma to become the most powerful merchant in the Aegean
- Legendary — collect Fame throughout the campaign and emerge with the most storied legacy when the last quest is resolved
The interesting wrinkle is that completing quests requires a collective resource contribution from all players, while simultaneously racing toward their own individual win condition. That tension between shared progress and personal ambition is, I think, the beating heart of the game.
The card design has been a lot of fun, featuring familiar faces like Herakles, Medea, Orpheus, and Atalanta alongside the Olympians themselves. Each character's mechanical identity echoes their mythology: Hera converts Fame into Valor, Hermes can steal reward cards. Meleager can't be fatigued or discarded because — as fans of the myth will know — his fate was never quite in anyone else's hands. As for the grahic design, while I'm no graphist myself, the theme is culturally rich, with a lot of public domain material; I leaned heavily on the cultural backdrop, with flavor text honoring the mythology and the iconography showcasing major art pieces all around the world, including credits where available. It all coalesces into a strong identity as both a game and a cultural / educational product.
The game is currently in prototype. I've been playtesting it, iterating on the balance, and getting it to a place where I feel good about putting it in front of more people. There's still work to do — the art direction is in progress, some card effects are still being tuned, and the rulebook is going through its own rounds of polish. But the core loop is solid, the theme holds up, and the games I've played so far have been genuinely promising.
In the meantime, I'm always looking for fresh playtesters, so do reach out if you're interested, especially if you're in the Miami area. And for those of you who've designed your own games, I'd love to hear form you: how do you approach that first public introduction and how do you approach open playtesting?
Cheers,
Ady
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