Cataclysm Arcade Kickstarter promises a TCG where player victories shape the story

A trading card game where the players can influence the story by winning

When Brian David-Marshall first unveiled Cataclysm Arcade at PAX Unplugged last year, the veteran Magic: The Gathering commentator and tabletop designer pitched the upcoming trading card game as something deliberately different. Set in a bizarre, post-apocalyptic “retroverse” where gangs, mutants, synthetics, and monsters battle for survival in a gladiatorial blood sport, the game was built around one central idea: what if opening a booster pack was enough to start playing immediately?

Ahead of Cataclysm Arcade’s Kickstarter launch on June 2, David-Marshall told Polygon that months of testing the game at conventions and local game stores have only reinforced that philosophy.

“My favorite thing is when I play with people — especially industry veterans or retailers — and two turns into the game they look up at me and go, ‘Oh wait a minute, this is playable out of a single booster pack,’” David-Marshall told Polygon. “That’s when the switch flips.”

Unlike most traditional TCGs, where players are expected to buy starter decks or spend weeks learning deckbuilding fundamentals before fully engaging with the game, Cataclysm Arcade is designed around what David-Marshall describes as “no barrier to entry limited play.” Players can open a randomized booster pack and immediately sit down for a match.

That simplicity has become one of the game’s biggest selling points during demos.

At a recent convention in Dallas, David-Marshall invited the wife of a game store owner — who had never played a trading card game before — to join a four-player match.

“By turn 3, she’s banging on the table and trash-talking us,” he said. “Then she ends up winning the game.”

David-Marshall says longtime TCG players often underestimate how intimidating modern card games can appear to newcomers, especially after decades of accumulated mechanics and jargon.

“People who are TCG-adjacent — they’re at the game store, they watch people play, but they feel intimidated by 30 years of history — this gives them a way in,” he said.

That doesn’t mean Cataclysm Arcade will abandon the deeper experiences players expect. David-Marshall emphasized that the game still supports traditional constructed play, sealed formats, drafting, multiplayer variants, and fan-created formats. But the team wants the act of learning the game to feel less overwhelming.

“We expect people to experience the full expression of a TCG,” he said. “But we wanted to make sure the very first step was easy.”

The Kickstarter campaign will include multiple pledge tiers, ranging from individual booster packs to full cases, along with accessories like sleeves and deck boxes. Stretch goals will unlock variant art treatments, upgraded foiling, and other cosmetic bonuses.

Players who sign up for the game’s early bird reservations before June 1 will also receive sample booster packs during the Kickstarter campaign itself, and those packs will ship on June 1.

“I don’t want someone backing the campaign just to back it,” David-Marshall said. “I want them to feel excited about what we’re building.”

One of the project’s more ambitious ideas revolves around its companion app, which currently functions as a life tracker and card database. Over the long term, the app will also allow official tournament results to influence the game’s ongoing storyline. In every match, you have a “Boss” card that functions similarly to a Magic: The Gathering Commander. But you also have additional combat units called “Fighters.”

“It's not rolled out yet for the most current version, but we can let people associate a secondary character with their boss,” David-Marshall said. “Let’s call it a lieutenant, for lack of a better term, chosen from the ranks of Fighters. Whichever Fighter does the best, might upgrade them to a Boss in the next set or two.”

In early previews, one character future players have latched onto is Bleargh, Noxious Entity.

“Bleargh is our little filth monster, who is just this incarnation of all the slime and waste and whatever you find at the bottom of the New York City subway tracks brought to mystical life,” David-Marshall said. “He was created as this counterpoint to all the big-eyed, cute characters that you see a lot of. But people have loved him. There's an entire Cult of Bleargh on our Discord.”

Cataclysm Arcade’s larger story universe will also extend beyond the cards themselves. The developers plan to release tie-in comics between major set launches, complete with special booster packs featuring exclusive art and narrative-focused cards.

“We wanted to build story worlds through games,” David-Marshall said. "It’s been wild seeing which characters people connect with. That’s what you dream about when you start telling stories.”

The Kickstarter campaign for Cataclysm Arcade launches June 2 and will run through early August. Backers are expected to receive the game’s Founders Edition set, titled Crawling From the Wreckage, sometime in October, with a broader retail release planned for November. Looking ahead, the team plans to release four sets per year.

For David-Marshall, though, the project’s biggest goal has less to do with card rarity or competitive metas than with recreating the social magic that made tabletop gaming feel special in the first place.

“I think people are hungry for real social experiences again,” he said. “30 years ago, I met people playing Magic who I’m still friends with today. I’d love to create something where people 30 years from now say, ‘Remember when we played that game together?’”