- 01Read the next threat
- 02Play cards
- 03Mark retained cards
- 04Draw within capacity
Holding cards across turns
Unused cards survive into later turns, constrained by retention slots, hand limits or recovery costs.
The player's decision
Keep future defense or make room for fresh offense?
Original scenario
Original: retain two of five cards before a charged attack; saving shields reduces space for new draws.
Start with this prototype
Build eight cards, four telegraphed turns and two retention slots. Separate hand, discard and draw piles. Survive the final attack to win; undo choices before resolving.
Change one variable
Compare key-card discards with one versus two retention slots.
What to observe in a playtest
Is full-hand behavior visible? Is retain/discard order deterministic?
Take the full design card
Includes rules, scope, tuning questions and sources for further planning. It does not create a project automatically.
Original analysis · version 1
Common pitfall
Unlimited retention can erase draw tension or clog hands with weak cards.
Observations and sources
Cases refer to public documentation. Developers and community wikis are credited separately; document review is not a claim of hands-on testing.
- Slay the Spire
In the first game Retain preserves cards; Runic Pyramid skips discarding, with different keyword interactions.
- Gloomhaven
Cards persist between rounds; recovering discards through rest loses a card, a contrasting preservation cost.
Brief for the studio
Opens the AI studio with the brief below in the input. You can edit it. Nothing starts automatically.
Build eight cards, four telegraphed turns and two retention slots. Separate hand, discard and draw piles. Survive the final attack to win; undo choices before resolving.
Covers are original AI-generated style illustrations. Game names reference publicly visible design choices and remain the property of their owners. This atlas does not supply screenshots or assets from those games. Prompts and combinations are original drafts for new games.