Early January 2026, Nick Brachmann told me about a game concept that had been tossed around a while ago of a Fort inspired racing game. Something with scrappy kids, card based propulsion, customizable karts, and a crowd to impress. The next day I had a very ugly prototype on the table. At the time, I joked that it would be incredibly funny if this game somehow became our 2027 Gen Con release. Who knew where things would end up!
Kart started as a twisty race through a neighborhood. It was far closer to Fort, with suited cards that amplified powers when played in sets. Each card had a terrain type it could move through and each matching card played with it would move you an additional space. There were fans on the sides that would give you points for playing matching cards while adjacent, but required a longer path to reach them. There were trophies at the end that granted points. Surprisingly, this worked well enough to actually play a full game! This first playtest’s feedback set 3 rules that became core through the rest of development: players should always HAVE to move on their turn, terrain should provide deep personality to the map, and this race definitely needed to take place in a neighborhood.
The next large swing took place in early February. This iteration introduced the two most important mechanics that still exist in the game today: steering and an inverse speed/control relationship. Players sped up every turn, and the faster they went the less cards they were able to play. The combination of these ingredients caught fire. The puzzle of steering, velocity, and control were the sauce that was going to make this racing game unique.
The main limiter as Kart progressed from here was its nature as a deckbuilder. Players had left and right cards in their deck, and it was so essential to have access to these every turn that players’ decks needed to be incredibly small. It was so restrictive to the design space and possibilities we knew we needed a core change.
Our adventures into the tableaus came in April!
As we shifted to a tableau, my primary goal was maintaining the feeling of combos from the perfect hand of cards and the feeling of painting yourself into a corner that poor deck management could cause. We created a system of Control to let players pay to activate cards, and Dents to force players to choose which of their cards to make more expensive for the rest of the game. The initial concept had your tableau ballooning. There were checkpoints on the map that could grant players up to 4 additional cards per race but you had to forgo points to gain them. This version technically worked, but fell into chaos and overload at either end of the system. Half of playtesters would always forgo upgrades in favor of points, leading to slightly boring races that ended with a kart too dented to be usable but that scored well. The other half of players stacked up on upgrades, were overwhelmed by massive tableaus of options, and largely avoided the problems I wanted dents to present. Most of the pieces were there but they weren’t in harmony.
Early in the tableau conversations, Andrea recommended that cards be tied to the four wheels of a kart. This resurfaced as we continued to chafe against the strangeness of an unlimited width tableau. We started to explore players being required to stack upgrades onto one of their starting cards. This hit!
Costs were another problem that was fraying at the seams. We wanted to create a feeling of damage having long consequences and creating your own problems, but players chafed against the high costs and it resulted in them ceasing to engage with the powers rather than weigh the decision to sacrifice to use them. It didn’t work. Nick recommended that cards be able to fully break off, maybe even to some benefit as the Kart became lighter and easier to maneuver. This really energized the combos and reduced the long term consequences of dents.
The final form of the game was cohering! We made further tweaks and system adjustments, but games were feeling good, chaotic, and rich with expression. But one question remained. Who SHOULD win?
Follow the Kart Kickstarter Campaign here! (Launching September 15!)
Find more info, discussion, and future Design Diaries on the Kart BGG Page.