Card Game: Scuttle

I've always loved games that have a high simple/accessible-to-fun ratio, and for a long time I thought it would be amazing if there was a fun, strategic game you could play with a simple deck of regular cards. Eventually, I discovered Cuttle, which checked all the boxes of what I was looking for: Easy to get the materials for, the first combat card game ever, and with interesting mechanics that wouldn't require too much explanation to new players.

My brother and I tried playing Cuttle with a standard deck, and while it was fun, it was burdensome to have to constantly look at a cheat sheet to remember what each of the different cards could be used for. My solution was to make a custom deck of Cuttle cards with each card's abilities displayed for ease of play. During the process of my design, I decided to change my version of the game to be called Scuttle. This was primarily because every time I would talk about it to my wife, she thought I was talking about a game called "Cuddle," and also because there's a mechanic in the game called "scuttling," so why the game not being called that in the first place honestly seems like an oversight to me. 

How to play

I won't go into super deep detail with how to play this game, since you can just read the Wikipedia article I linked to above, but the basics are this: The objective is to gain control of 21 or more points' worth of point cards. Each number card is worth its respective amount of points, and each number card has at least one special "one-off" ability that you can use and then discard the card instead of using it for its point number. Royalty cards are "permanent" cards that enforce a passive condition on the rules of the game as long as they're in play. You can "scuttle" a card of your opponent by sacrificing a card of higher number value or the same number but higher suit rank (the suit rank goes ♣ < ♦ < ♥ < ♣).

In going through the process of designing each card for my custom version of Cuttle on Photoshop, I had several goals, some of which changed over time:

Goal #1: Make the game as accessible as possible

As you can see from the Wikipedia article, the rules for Scuttle are simple, but the instructions and terminology can be confusing. I used my perfectionist editing skills to standardize the language of the rules of Scuttle to make a style guide that would keep the game as accessible to players as possible. Some of these changes were:

• Calling "one-offs" spells.
• Giving spells and permanent cards evocative names that fit with their function to cut down on time and mental energy needed to read out what a card does every time it's used.
• Spell out the name of the card at the top, making it easy to see what each card's value is while playing.
• Making two quick reference cards in the deck for easily reviewing the game's objective and what actions can be taken on a turn, etc.
• Standardizing other language throughout the instructions and each of the cards, such as always using the word "scrap" to refer to placing a card into the discard pile.

Goal #2: Keep the game's simple face card theme

My original thought with making Scuttle was to jazz it up into a fantasy combat game reminiscent of Magic: The Gathering or Hearthstone. I experimented with using AI art to come up with characters for the point cards that would match the card's abilities, as well as their power level compared to other characters. I even considered making different power variations of each creature depending on the character's rank to help the player know which one could scuttle another. For example, the Ace, which was the lowest point value but could destroy all point cards on the table, was represented by a pyromaniac pirate who would I guess burn everything up. This was a little less than a year ago when Midjourney's AI art wasn't as good as it is now, so the tackiness of what I had to work with for the art kind of turned me off to the project for a while.

Near the end of last year, I stumbled on my Scuttle project again and started trying again to make art for it, this time with DALL-E. I experimented with old-fashioned line drawings rather than Hearthstone-esque graphic art, and when that just didn't look right, I decided to keep the card art focused on point values and the original face card symbols but put AI art icons on them for the abilities.

As you can see, the inconsistency of the icon art style, and just the concept of AI art in general, was tacky for this project. The unique thing about Cuttle that makes it stand out is that it can be played with normal cards. So I embraced that fully instead. Not only did I keep the game's style even in the Poker-themed fonts I chose, I kept the cards' spell icons, but I took their graphics directly from classic French-suited playing cards. I realized that this had the added bonus of familiarizing players with what cards did what, essentially training them to be able to play with a normal card deck if they found themselves without a Scuttle deck! Best of all, the theme was consistent, simple, and more accessible than ever.

Goal #3: Make the cards as easy to use as possible

Once I got the style down, I went through the arduous process of Photoshopping the cards and laying them out for printing. I made the card's symbol the largest part of the card, mostly because points are the most important aspect of the game, and I wanted it to be easy for the players to see how many points they and their opponent were up to. I considered making Aces show a numeral 1 instead of an A, but I figured since it was the lowest number, it would stand out and be easy enough to remember.

Since suit rank is an important aspect of scuttling, I made the symbol in the upper-right corner of a card display not only the card's suit, but in smaller graphics what types of cards that specific card can scuttle due to its position in the ranking. The ranking is also displayed on the back of each Scuttle card as a bonus visual aid, since there is bound to be a face-down card in view at all times on the top of the draw pile.

The 8 card was particularly unique, since it could be played as either a point card worth 8 points or a permanent card that forced the opponent to play with their hand exposed. The traditional game rule was to turn the 8 sideways to give the notion of a pair of glasses, so I kept that mechanic. Part of me wishes I would've made all permanent cards sideways to keep that consistent, but it's also nice to keep 8 unique that way.

Other than that, I also worked hard to keep the "rounded rectangle" style throughout all the cards, and I did some research on which fonts were easiest to read on cards. I also made spells shown in round icons and permanent abilities in hexagons.

You can order Scuttle and play it now! 

I was able to print the cards off of makeplayingcards.com, and now they offer a Marketplace option to share your designs. That means you can purchase Scuttle and play it today! The only thing I regret after holding the printed cards in my hand is that the cards are a little small for my taste. In the future I may make a larger version.

Anyway, this was a very fulfilling project to work on. There's just something about holding a functional item in your hand that you designed. Now if only I can find someone to play with.

Click here to purchase Scuttle yourself!