Designed by Brian David-Marshall (former Magic: The Gathering pro player and Pro Tour Historian) and Jay Van Hoy (renowned film producer from such films as The Lighthouse) and published by their company, Mothership Games, this new game is aiming to make an approachable and easy-to-jump-into card game that also offers some creative tweaks and surprises to the traditional TCG formula.

IGN had a chance to check out some early demo product and play some games, and as someone who has played a lot of card games, Cataclysm Arcade does some pretty neat things.

We also recently got to chat with Brian David-Marshall on Cataclysm Arcade in an exclusive interview here on IGN. He had this to say on these fresh card reveals for the two newest Eric Klug Alters, "The Decommissioner" and "Tryp, Timelost".

"One of the things I love most about the TCG community is all the different ways people are able to inhabit their hobbies and not just sustain their purchases but thrive. Nobody has thrived like Eric Klug, whose one of a kind, hand painted card alters are Holy Grail collector items for TCG fans. I was lucky to get a couple of Klugs years ago but he has blown up since then and doesn't take commissions any longer. Instead he relies on eBay auctions whenever he finishes a new piece."

"I had the chance to play an early prototype of Cataclysm Arcade with Eric a couple of GDCs ago and I knew I wanted to give people who were supporting our crowdfunding a chance to pull a one of a kind piece of art out of a pack of Cataclysm Arcade.

We have four cards that Eric has hand altered in the style of the 80s movies that inspired me to build this world, that will be in our box toppers for the Kickstarter campaign Founder's Edition. Basically every time you open a box there is a chance for one of four Eric Klugs to be in there. We will also have signed reproductions of them in packs but four players will get a chance to rip open a piece of artwork -- well technically a redemption certificate for that artwork -- and I think that is just cool as hell."

"I am excited to reveal the artwork for the last two pieces in the series for Tryp, Time Lost and The Decommissioner. Eric is a special talent and he is going to make four players the envy of collector's the world over."

Cataclysm Arcade TCG - Preview

Arcade adopts a comic book aesthetic with a color assortment of characters (both literal and figurative), many of whom have some dad-joke level of puns for names like “Cache Money” and “Seeya, Later Gator”.

For fans of the books by Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman, you will have a pretty good idea of the tone, which is decidedly different from other TCGs out there today, and that is only the tip of the Walrus-fighter iceberg.

The biggest draw, and loudest message that the team Mothership Games wants you to know, is that with Cataclysm Arcade, all you need to play a game is a single booster pack per player, and off you go. Inside a pack, you will get 15 cards, composed of a single boss card with associated rules and token cards, 5 common cards designed to synergize with that boss, 5 other common cards, 3 uncommon cards, and a rare or mythic card to round it all out.

Regardless of whether you and your friends play using just a booster pack or opt for the supported constructed formats where you build a deck, similar to a game of Commander (EDH) in Magic: The Gathering, your deck revolves a Boss. A unique type of card that dictates your starting health value and comes with a unique ability. In crack-a-pack play, all cards are usable, regardless of how many factions you pull from (more on these in a moment), but in constructed, you are limited to only including the faction of your boss and up to one other from the five possible. These include Apex, Mystic, Shifters, Survivors, and Synths, and could be thought of as Arcade’s typing or color pie, with each featuring cards that work well and can get some benefits when paired with others of their faction.

The structure of a game, Cataclysm Arcade, may be a bit of a brain bender for longtime TCG players, at least it was for me. Despite a handful of cards, a deck, the discard pile, and a swath of cards splayed out in front of me, how turns play out almost remind me more of how a board game would than what you would expect a TCG to. While in most TCGs, a player’s turn is composed of various phases that you take in order, usually involving drawing a card, playing cards, attacking, and then passing to the next player, Arcade handles things differently.

At the start of a turn, referred to as “Levels” in Arcade, everyone all at once will draw a card, and from there, each player takes a single action that could consist of playing a fighter (think a creature in Magic) or a weapon, attacking, using a card's ability, or passing. A turn lasts until every last player has passed, at which point a new turn/Level begins, and everyone draws a card and gains a number of coins, the general resource used in Cataclysm Arcade, equal to whatever Level it is.

In another twist to genre-established norms, cards don’t cost anything to bring them from your hand to the battlefield. Instead, each card has an associate level value (referred to as summon level just to help differentiate the level terms), and in order to play them, the Turn/Level has to be greater than or equal to the card’s summon level. That coin resource I mentioned a moment ago is instead used to pay your various cards' ability costs, equipping weapons, and paying for your cards’ attack costs, allowing them to swing and hit opponents. I admit, it took me a bit to get used to paying to attack, fighting against my TCG muscle memory.

By and large, after playing a few games at the Arcade, I’m sold on what Brian and Jay are bringing, but one area that I do find lacking is in a seeming lack of combat tricks or interaction outside of your activation. While some fighters are able to block, having the “Block” trait on them, at least in the cards they have shown so far on their website, outside of a few healing response cards or ones that impact your own field, there isn’t much you can do about your opponent’s things, which is a bummer. Hopefully, in the actual first set release or one of the early future sets, we will at least get cards that let you tap an enemy card to prevent them from attacking.

As a fan of Wizards of the Coast's Jumpstart product, which does a similar sort of open a pack and start playing thing, Arcade speeding full force into its incredibly approachable “crack a pack and play” marketing model, I am all here for. The unique take on the turn structure I find also lends itself really well to being new-to-the-hobby players, lessening the burden of decisions you need to make when it’s your turn to act.

In a field of card games with new cardboard rectangle buds emerging from cracks in the concrete almost every couple of weeks, it seems at this point, Cataclsym Arcade has found some solid success already, bringing in over 1.3 million dollars at the time I am writing this. The crew at Mothership Games has not only devised a game that bucks the status quo with aspects like how turns are handled or what resources are used for, but I appreciate and applaud them for making approachability such an important component. We will have to see if this will all result in this arcade’s lights staying on for a good long while.

Cataclsym Arcade’s campaign will run through July 8, 2026 over on Kickstarter with an estimated delivery date of Mid-Q4 2026 for early bird backers and Late-Q4 for all others.

Scott White is a freelance contributor to IGN, assisting with tabletop games and guide coverage. Follow him on X/Twitter or Bluesky.