Cardboard Town

Cardboard Town is a roguelite city-building card game where every turn revolves around drawing a hand of cards, expanding your city, and keeping a fragile economy from falling apart. Buildings, roads, action cards, and quests all come from your deck, giving you new options every round as you try to grow a thriving tabletop metropolis. Building a bigger city is only half the challenge, though. Every decision also affects vital resources like Money, Water, Electricity, Environment, and Safety, and letting any of them slip too far can quickly put the entire run at risk.

No two cities develop in exactly the same way. Random disasters, festivals, quests, upgrades, and card draws constantly change what the game asks of you, while permanent rewards earned after each run unlock additional cards, resources, cosmetics, and other options for future attempts. Instead of perfecting one city forever, Cardboard Town encourages you to keep experimenting, improve your high score, and see how far each new run can take you.

What Makes It Different?

• Combines city building with deckbuilding and roguelite progression
• Build your city using Building, Road, Action, and Quest cards
• Balance Money, Electricity, Water, Environment, and Safety every turn
• Random disasters and events force you to react to changing situations
• Random festivals, quests, and upgrades make every run different
• Features more than 300 Building, Action, and Quest cards, along with Festivals and Upgrades
• Earn persistent rewards that unlock new cards, resources, cosmetics, and additional options between runs
• Three Red Alerts end the current run
• Includes nine different game modes

Growing the City One Hand at a Time

Every turn begins with a new hand of cards, and deciding what to play is rarely straightforward. Expanding your residential areas might increase your population, but that growth also places greater demands on your utilities and public services. Building too aggressively without supporting infrastructure can leave your city struggling to keep up with its own success.

The cards themselves cover different aspects of city management. Building cards expand the town, Road cards connect it together, Action cards help you respond to unexpected situations, and Quest cards offer additional objectives that reward careful planning. Since each draw presents a different mix of possibilities, adapting your plans becomes just as important as following them.

Every Decision Affects the Numbers

Cardboard Town places constant pressure on a handful of interconnected city statistics. Money funds expansion, while Water, Electricity, Environment, and Safety determine whether the city can support continued growth. Ignoring one area to improve another may solve a short-term problem, but it often creates a larger one a few turns later.

Random disasters make that balancing act even more demanding. When trouble strikes, you’ll need the right Action Cards available to deal with it before the situation spirals out of control. Failing to manage your city’s needs or leaving disasters unresolved results in a Red Alert, and collecting three of them immediately ends the run.

Unlock More With Every Attempt

Even unsuccessful cities contribute to future runs. Completing a game earns persistent rewards that expand your available options, allowing you to unlock additional cards, resources, cosmetics, and upgrades over time. Combined with changing festivals, quests, disasters, and card draws, each new attempt offers another opportunity to build a city that develops in a completely different direction from the last.

Good If You Like…

Players who enjoy Stacklands, Against the Storm, Luck be a Landlord, or Balatro should appreciate Cardboard Town’s combination of city building, card management, and roguelite progression.