A card game where the story is the mechanic, not the theme. Two players, three acts, one ill-fated ending, and whoever deserves it most gets it.
Working title · A concept by Pamplemoose Games · For Best in Play
In Cruel Fates you collect story beats instead of characters, and the thing you build is a tale. That's the whole subversion, and it comes straight from the books: the revival has three recurring faces and hundreds of one-story sinners.
Every EC story runs the same spine. A setup you recognize, a turn you didn't see coming, a comeuppance that fits the crime. Seventy years of readers know that shape by heart, across horror, sci-fi, fantasy and the west. The game plays the shape.
Each player constructs a nine-card story across three acts, side by side on the table, both racing toward the same cruel ending.
A shared Conclusion card sits between you, its first condition face up and the rest hidden.
Each turn, draw three, play one, discard two from your Act deck. Three story beats close an act.
Beats only connect where their connective tissue matches, so your tale sprawls across the table as it grows.
Between acts, play a Twist on your opponent's tale and reveal the next condition. Both of you adapt.
After Act III, the tale that meets the Conclusion wins, and if both do, the more tangled one takes it.
Every beat carries tissue on its edges, and the next beat has to match it or it can't be played. Your tale grows as a chain that bends, branches and doubles back. A good tale looks like a mess on the table, and that's the point.
Tissue does two jobs. It's the puzzle that makes a tale hard to finish, and it's the editor that keeps nine random beats from turning into word salad. The Conclusion asks for tissue too, so a strong chain is also a winning one.
Act I, Act II and Act III, around twenty cards each. Story beats make up the bulk, and characters and Twists round them out. Where you hide your nastiest Twist is a decision in itself.
Scenes and consequences pulled from the revival's stories. Each belongs to one act and one line, and carries tissue on its edges.
Nameless folk from the anthologies. They don't stay on the table. They show up, do one thing to the board, and go.
Between acts only. Change their next color, break a link, force a line they didn't bring. A big spiral on the frame so the whole table knows.
Deck rules keep the ratios honest: a fixed count of beats, characters and Twists per act. Twenty cards per act is deliberate, because with fewer, every tissue match is free and the puzzle disappears.
The Conclusion is one gimmicked card at the center of every match. It sits in a printed sleeve, and at the start of each act you pull it up one notch to show the next condition. Both players chase the same ending, and the tale you were so proud of suddenly needs a bridge to somewhere else. That's the twist ending, built into the rules.
Some cards let you bolt an alternate condition onto the Conclusion, so there's more than one road to the pit.
A tale can stay in one line or cross between them. The Conclusion decides which mix it wants, and a Twist can force a color you didn't plan for.
Classic horror. Hauntings, killers, the Grave-Digger's house.
Sci-fi. Billionaires, AI, space, humanity as the problem.
Dark fantasy. Fairy tales retold, witches, robot kings.
Horror. The Tormentor's book, the monthly spine.
Western. Revenge, gold, and the rope at the end.
Every game that ever carried the EC name was licensed off a TV show thirty years ago. Nothing has been made from the comics themselves, and the revival's variant covers prove the readers already collect. Horror is one of the healthiest themes on the hobby shelf, and the only thing missing is a box.
Each new line Oni launches is a new color, a new host and a new box, so the publishing calendar is the content calendar.
Tissue and colors are the whole system, so a new line never needs new rules, just new tales and a new ending or two.
The card game we designed, funded on Kickstarter in under thirty minutes. Since then: licensed concepts for brands, leagues, comics and toy lines, every one built from the IP's own structure instead of a reskin.
A two-designer studio. Cole reads horror for fun and will take point on the source material. Zack doesn't read comics at all, which is how we'll know when the game explains itself.
Best in Play reps it, Oni and the Gaines family approve it, and the game stays theirs. Here's what it takes to get from this deck to a table.
Read the line. The 2024-onward run, cover to cover, so beats and Conclusions get pulled from real stories.
Design brief. Card counts, tissue vocabulary, deck rules, the first three Conclusions.
Paper prototype and playtests. The coherence test happens here, before anyone draws a card.
Publisher conversation through Best in Play, with a prototype in hand.
Scope and budget are a conversation we have once the books are in hand.
If Oni's up for it, the first move is getting us the books. We'd love to hop on a call and walk through where the tissue could go.
Zack Howe & Cole Beardsley · Pamplemoose Games · zack@pamplemoosegames.com
Concept pitch prepared by Pamplemoose Games LLC for Best in Play LLC and EC Comics (Oni Press). All EC Comics and Oni Press names, titles and imagery appear solely to demonstrate this concept and remain the property of their owners. Game mechanics and designs are original work of Pamplemoose Games LLC. Placeholder art only; final art would be commissioned. AI never touches the game design. Not for distribution.