Archduke · Side Quest · Card Game · Physical Product · 2020
A card game I invented in the wilderness, designed in lockdown, and sold to 50,000 strangers.
Self-designed, self-published, self-shipped from a basement — then licensed to an indie publisher and carried into 275 retail stores worldwide.
The Game
Strategy, memory, luck, and a little bit of sabotage.
You start each round with four cards face-down and permission to peek at two of them. High cards are bad. Low cards are good. Over the course of the round, you draw, swap, and discard — trying to shed your heaviest cards while keeping track of what's where in your hand and watching every card your opponents touch.
Special cards let you interfere with other players' hands. And if an opponent discards a card you know you're holding, you can throw yours on top — but only if you're faster than everyone else at the table.
Most rounds run under ten minutes. Most groups play until someone insists on stopping.
The Origin
It started at a surf hostel in New Zealand.
It started in a small New Zealand hostel in 2016, where a group of strangers were sharing beers, stories, and card games — including the classic game of Golf that I quickly fell in love with. I spent countless hours "playing" this game in my head while traveling solo across the country, eventually inventing so many new rules that I decided I had an entirely new game on my hands which I named Archduke, inspired by the name of a nearby glacier.
I brought a homemade version back home and kept playing it for the next four years. With friends, with family, with anyone who would sit down. The rules evolved. The depth grew. And the problem became obvious: a standard deck of cards couldn't carry what the game was becoming. Players couldn't track what each card did at a glance. The experience kept breaking down at exactly the moments it should have been the most fun.
In 2020, the world stopped. I had time, restlessness, and an idea I'd been sitting on for four years. I decided to build the real version.
The Design
Inspired by the landscapes that started it all.
I designed the deck in Adobe Illustrator, pulling from years of freelance graphic design work. Each card got its own illustrated landscape — the mountains, deserts, and coastlines from the travels that inspired the game in the first place. Color and composition did the functional work: helping players identify cards at a glance in a fast-moving game.
Beyond the cards, I designed the box, the back-of-card pattern, the iconography, and the rulebook layout. The Figma file by the end was its own sprawling thing — hundreds of variations, palette tests, and layout iterations across a canvas I probably spent too long inside.
Launch
One post. Fifty decks. Three hundred orders.
In early 2021, I ordered 50 copies from my printer, built a simple website, and posted my story to r/boardgames — a writeup about designing and self-producing my own card game during lockdown, with photos of the cards and a link to buy.
A few hours later my phone started buzzing. The orders kept coming well past what I had in stock. I called my printer, placed an emergency run of 500 copies, and spent the next few weeks fulfilling every order by hand from my basement.
I sold out day one to over 300 buyers across 14 countries.
Fulfillment HQ, 2021.
What Players Say
"The best card game you've never heard of"
Over the next two years, I sold over 3,000 copies of Archduke from my basement almost entirely by word-of-mouth. For a period, it was one of the highest rated games on BoardGameGeek with a rating of 9.2/10 and feedback like this:
This game is amazing. Everyone I know that has played it has bought it. I played it once with friends and immediately bought it. I don't normally leave reviews, but this game is seriously great.
I think this game is basically perfect, and I have a master's in game design.
Superb game. Introduced to so many varied groups and without fail at least one person has gone on to buy their own copy. Honestly can't think of a reason this shouldn't be in everyone's collection.
The game is absolutely beautiful. At least one person out of every group I play with ends up buying a copy for themselves. I now have two copies myself.
Archduke is without a doubt my most played game. It's the favorite of my friends, and I will often find myself wishing to end game nights with a round of Archduke.
Having 3 industrial shelves full of board games, this little box has been an absolute staple at game nights since we bought it in 2023. Several friends have bought it — including my boss, so the office had its own copy.
Our family's new favorite game. Our whole family of 6 can play together, from adults all the way down to our 6-year-old.
Outstanding game. Easy to play and very strategic. Very fast to learn, combining elements of push-your-luck, hidden knowledge, strategic hand management, and memory.
A quick game that my kiddos request frequently. There's enough tactical decisions every turn to make this genuinely engaging.
The best game I have ever bought. Keeps my family together, has a rush of adrenalin, makes you villains while strategically planning.
I hate that I love this game, but I just do. It's so quick and light-hearted that it just works for me somehow. It's presented really well too, with pleasing art.
Ryan is an absolute genius. This fast-paced strategy card game will keep you on your toes and have you second-guessing every move you make.
Excellent fun family game. Fast-paced, appeals to all ages. Simple enough to learn but enough skill required to challenge everyone.
One of my current favorite card games. Right balance of luck, memorization, and strategy.
I really love this game. Simple and easy to learn, yet complex enough to enjoy over and over again with all different sizes of groups. The artwork is awesome.
The Second Act
A publisher came knocking.
In 2022, Stellar Factory — an indie game publisher known for critically acclaimed titles — reached out to license Archduke and bring it into their catalog. We revised the artwork and components together with the goal of making the game as widely available as possible.
The second edition launched in November 2022. It's now carried in over 275 brick-and-mortar retail stores around the world and available on Amazon.
At some point it went viral within the Amish community. Hundreds of handwritten cash orders arrived by mail, which remains one of my favorite sentences I've ever gotten to write.
At the End of the Day
Six years on, still in print and still in play.
50,000+
all-time copies sold
9.2 / 10
BoardGameGeek rating
4.8★
on Amazon
275
global retail stores