The First Million

Sonderland, the developer behind The First Million, built a game that fuses the number-scaling compulsion of idle games with the card-drafting decisions of roguelike deckbuilders. It released on June 24, 2026.

Each run has players assembling a deck and chasing an escalating money target, with the first million serving as the initial benchmark. Reaching it is not possible on a first attempt by design; instead, each failed run permanently unlocks new cards and upgrades that carry into subsequent attempts, steadily widening the strategic options available. The game is structured around multiple difficulty levels and dozens of distinct challenges, which gate access to the strongest cards and upgrades, so progression is tied directly to completing them rather than accumulating a passive currency.

What separates The First Million from conventional deckbuilders is its emphasis on finding and then deliberately breaking its own economy. Synergies are meant to be pushed to absurd extremes, and the challenge design actively pushes players toward unconventional configurations rather than a single optimal build. Sonderland estimates that clearing the first difficulty level takes a couple of hours for players with deckbuilder experience, while completing all difficulties and challenges requires fifteen to twenty hours. Beyond that, a daily mode presents a fixed card pool each day and ranks players globally by how much money they generate with it, giving the sandbox side of the game a competitive structure.

The game’s update arc began immediately after launch. A hotfix followed the June 24 release within days, and a second patch landed shortly after. July 2026 brought Update 3, first tested on a beta branch before going live, and a fourth update titled Buff Bonanza entered the beta branch later that same month, signaling an active early post-launch cadence focused on balance and card tuning.