Show HN: Trading cards made with e-ink displays

[jonahss]

I made a thing!

In 2014, I was holding a stack of iPhones and thought to myself:

    "Hey, if I had each phone display a playing card, I could click a button and they'd shuffle themselves"

I pared that idea all the way down to this: trading cards made of e-ink displays.

Right now, each card costs me about $20 each, but with only a bit more scale, I think I can get that down to $10.

In doing this project, I learned how to design electronics and circuit boards. I learned Rust and wrote my first driver, I upped my CAD skills, 3D printed, and did my first resin casting. I generated the images on the cards using stable-diffusion.

HN always seems to appreciate new uses for e-ink. Thought I'd share :)

[gigel82]

There are a lot of "electronic price tags" which are basically the same form factor as your trading cards, except they mass produce them (have nice plastic cases) and they usually include a 3-color eink (black-white-red or black-white-yellow) plus a wireless transmitter (usually proprietary protocol, but sometimes plain Bluetooth and/or NFC) for OTA updates and a 10-year battery (sometimes replaceable CR2032). Also, if you can grab them at $6 / piece, I imagine they're being produced for a lot less than that (random AliExpress link: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803094207083.html).

If you're thinking of mass-production might be worth reaching out to one of those manufacturers; you can buy in bulk if nothing else (but I'm sure they'd be open to customizing it a bit - maybe some branding on the plastic molding and whatnot).

[jonahss]

Heh, the screens I use are exactly the ones contained in those products.

Huh, the battery lasts for ten years? I wonder how many refreshes you get for that. Maybe I should just be using those.....

[fxtentacle]

The Waveshare ones are even powered purely by NFC. So they don't need a battery, yet you can rewrite them with ease.

[pjerem]

Looks like you need a gateway (not that expensive but too expensive to just hack with those tags at home).

I’d love to find cheap e-ink tags that can just receive a picture over some cheap wireless protocol and display it.

[jiveturkey]

Seen these at Ross and/or other discount stores. It boggled my mind. How could these possibly be cheaper than the staff swapping bits of paper. 10 year battery but I assume they break (and you have to walk around to find the broken ones) in 1-2 years, or get retail abuse, or other calamities.

The 4" ones (close to paper tag size) are $20.

[Benjamin_Dobell]

This is absolutely awesome! I've had (terrible quality) 3-color e-ink displays and some associated electronics sitting in my office cupboard for a few years because I wanted to prototype this project, but I never did. I'm so glad you did this!

Since I just want this to come to fruition, I'll explain what my intended launch strategy was. I'm a developer (just a contractor, not owner) of Tabletop Simulator and do some stuff in that community where there's an overlap between physical tabletop and digital. My plan was to launch a card game (largely designed) and the e-ink cards simultaneously via Kickstarter. However, before that, a digital implementation of the game on TTS. Basically as much as I love this idea, I couldn't see it being monetisable on its own unless you can bring the cost down significantly. It also didn't seem like a defensible business on its own. But if the product is a game that uses said functionality, well, that'd be just swell.

Anyway, congrats, this is awesome!

[jonahss]

Thanks! And thanks for the tip! I may reach out to continue the conversation and shoot ideas back and forth if that's okay :)

[Garlef]

Maybe make it an NFT based CCG and hardcode a transaction fee of 5% to make money on the secondary market.

[trynewideas]

The tray interface immediately reminded me of Harmonix's Dropmix.[1] A Dropmix-alike where you can program your own "cards" to store and play, or even just trigger, short loops on a playback device would be incredible.

Adventure card games,[2][3] which blend tabletop RPG and card game mechanics to play through a story and often rely on mutable and custom third-party or player-created cards, are another niche that could rock programmable cards. They don't rely on collectability or random card packs - everything to play comes in a base set, and expansions take the forms of additional classes or adventures. But they can be tedious to set up, card mutability means marking and smudging cards or sleeving them, and using third-party or player-made cards usually requires getting them printed to fit into the deck seamlessly - programmable cards can dodge all of those issues.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZLXSmq9s1A

2: https://www.strangeassembly.com/2019/review-pathfinder-adven...

3: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.obsidian.p...

[cableshaft]

This is very cool. I think you'll have a hard time finding a traditional board game publisher willing to put money into this (there might be one or two out there, but most will see this as prohibitively expensive for them), but you might be able to pull off a successful Kickstarter for them on your own.

Kind of like the Blinks game system, these little hexes with colored lights in them that each have a separate game in them and can 'teach' the other hexes they connect to.

One of the Blinks Kickstarters: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/move38/blinks-smart-boa...

[piyh]

Card games are generally played with 10-20 cards once you hit your mid/endgames. I can't think of a system where you'd have mechanical benefit of all those being epaper before you should go full digital. Having a few choice mechanics tied to them is the way to go.

What does epaper get you that paper doesn't? A microprocessor and persistent state. RFID cards on a board game might be a good middle state for most cards. Scan them as played. Build gamestate or dynamics to be populated to epaper.

Epaper would be good for storyline branches, timeline progressions, evolving characters. Make them traveling characters being owned by different players. Differentiate them from becoming a static scoreboard that could be represented on a single tablet.

[jonahss]

Thanks!

Yeah, it's a weird in-between. I don't think a game publisher would take a risk on it, but neither would silicon valley VCs.

Kickstarter would be my bet too. I was going to put this project down for a little while and start a "real" startup though.....

[safety1st]

Firstly super novel idea with tons of space for both technical and gameplay innovation. Really love it!

If we're talking business models, the one which immediately comes to mind as appropriate is that of a gaming console. Sell the hardware (e-cards, maybe a mat?) at a loss, then sell games for it at no marginal cost. Let other people build games for it because hit games are what sell platforms.

Since this essentially a portable gaming device, consumers may compare it to e.g. a Nintendo Switch - if you undercut the Switch and you have a blockbuster title or two, you could have incredible product on your hands.

Presumably the lucrative economics of trading card games could be applied here as well...!

[retendo]

Finally, a way to play physical Sabacc[1] in real life.

[1]: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Sabacc

[kevinmhickey]

Scrolled to find this comment and was not disappointed.

[mbreese]

I got a Sabacc deck someplace a few years back. I think it might have been from a storefront in Disney(land|World). But, it looks like you can also buy a set online from a few places.

My son was really into it for a while, but they included betting “credits” with the game that weren’t nearly as fun as normal chips would have been.

[Tworthers]

Seems like a bit of a solution waiting for a problem.

Given the current limitations in the system I would go with a monster battler game with a starter set of just 2 cards which would be yours and your opponents monster and then add a selection of power-ups/abilities these could be much cheaper components that could be played on the base station for an effect. These could be swipe cards or even just resistors basically anything that can be measured by the base station. With this hybrid system you could get the cool evolving over time monsters as well as lots of pieces to play with. Lots of scope for cool and hidden interactions. (Ideas taken from digimon tamers)

[jonahss]

Ooh yes!!

[cwkoss]

Super cool. Taking a crack at rules for a game using this.

---

Sample game idea: CAKE DECORATION game - players have to try to decorate as many cakes as possible. Requires 10 cards.

One card is the 'design recipe' card and never leaves the base station. It shows an amount of ingredients, ex. "1 cup of buttercream, 3 shakes of sprinkles, 4 squirts of whipped cream".

Players start with either 3 blank cards or 3 random low-amount ingredient cards.

On a players turn, they select from three cards: each card is an ingredient, an amount, and a modifier. So cards could be "1 shake of sprinkles (2x)" "2 squirts of whipped cream (+1)" "1/4 cup of buttercream (+1/4)" (could make variations or add other kinds of things that might go on a cake)

The player draws a card, base station detects which card is missing, and the other two ingredient cards increase in amount based on the modifier value displayed on the card. ex. "1 shake of sprinkles with a 2x" will fully complete the recipe if not drawn for two turns (because 1 x2 x2 = 4 shakes, which is enough for the recipe)

With 4 cards in their hand, if the player can pay for the whole recipe, they win the round and get a point. On win, new recipe appears and all cards in the winning players hand and on the base station get rerolled to new low-amount ingredient cards. Score could be displayed on the margins of the recipe card.

If they cannot pay for the recipe, the player places a card back on the base station. And their turn is over. (Should ingredients be re-randomized when replaced on base station? Should that be a player decision whether to reroll it?)

First player to decorate N cakes wins the game.

---

I think something like this could make for a viable game with a low number of cards, but could be more fun with a greater number (17 ideally?) which would allow for 3 active recipe targets (+2), using the 4th slot for another ingredient and displaying recipe as a disconnected piece(s) (+1), and larger hand sizes (5 -> +4) to allow for more complex recipes

An interesting game design question is how random you want the cards to be? Fair random would probably be viable, but since the 'deck' can know and make decisions based on the state of cards not connected to the base station, you could deal unfairly if less randomness would make the game more interesting or fun.

[jonahss]

oh my gosh, I love it! Thanks!

I'm glad you kept the total card count low, that's a limiting factor because of their price and size.

I'll try it out!

[qup]

This is a really impressive project. That's an assload of new stuff to learn. Congrats on shipping.

[jonahss]

Thanks! Well, not "shipped" per se. Nobody's got one but me so far :P

[Aminatt]

That's actually interesting, and it's great that you decided to develop yourself in that field! Do you already have an insurance to protect your business? I can tell you that this type of policy is essential for running any type of business, and there are many sources of info like small business insurance twitter https://twitter.com/smallbizinsures acc that can help you with that. So I hope your business will flourish, good luck!

[ShredKazoo]

I guess the advantage of this setup, relative to playing a board game on an iPad, is that keeping info hidden from your opponent is more natural with cards. I suggest to exploit this, you either make the cards thin enough to hold in a hidden 'hand' the way someone might do in magic the gathering, or (much easier) have your plinth include a hidden hand prop section ala Scrabble.

In terms of product development, I think the best path would probably be to create or find an opensource game engine for cardgames and have a nice development environment plus API where a dev can write a game for the engine that either runs on a PC or runs on the cards, with no code changes required. (PC support makes debugging and iterating on game design much faster.)

[jonahss]

I hadn't thought of a Scrabble style card holder, good idea.

Ah yeah, I think the game design community mostly uses tabletop simulator and one other such program for testing out ideas. Being able to deploy to both is a good idea.

[hifikuno]

I haven't read all the comments here yet, but I reckon this would be cool to use as a dungeon exploration game. Each card is a room and you can lay them out as you explore new rooms. When certain events are triggered you put the card back on the machine to be shuffled then placed back where it was. Get in, get as much loot as you can and get out without dying.

[AndrewDucker]

If you haven't encountered it you should check out Legends Untold https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/legendsuntold/legends-u...

Obviously not eink, but exactly that kind of card game exploration.

[jonahss]

Oh cool, good idea!

[redorb]

Honestly 2 of these per person and 5 for the turn,flop,river - and we have a texas holdem game without cards and shuffling - just chips...

so a 6 person game, 12 of these + 5 ~ 17 of these ~ $450 ~ about the cost of real nice chips and cards...

[eru]

Well, you could also 'just' put an iPad in the middle of the table for public game state (like turn, flop river in Poker), and everyone has their smartphone for private game state (like your hand in Poker) and you can play most boardgames quite nicely.

Instead of the iPad in the middle you could use a TV screen, too, but then you can't directly interact with that via touch screen.

[jonahss]

hey, yeah! The commenter about the iPad is also right, but, there's something satisfying about the physicality.

That said, you can play poker with a deck of cards and a pile of beans.

But yeah, I'm looking for something somewhere between Poker and an iPad.

See my other comment, a lot of interesting mechanics are available.

I'd sell you a poker set if you want to impress your friends :D Email me: [email protected]

[dalbasal]

One card pp might be adequate for the hold cards. It's easy enough to represent two cards on one little screen. Feels tidier to me.

For holdem, you ideally need a plinth that can "deal" cards upside down. Maybe it's more general to have a plinth that can update cards in either orientation.

Congrants jonahss on your art. Thanks for sharing.

[cwkoss]

Very cool!

In terms of making a game with them, I think a design where the pins are on the face of the card may be useful. I want to be able to 'draw' a card without knowing what is on it.

Certainly can be useful with pins on the back (and I totally get how this orientation is probably more size-efficient), but I think front pins would be more 'playable'. Maybe a design could be achieved with holes that pass through all the way so it can be written with either orientation?

Being able to 'power up' an existing card in the upwards orientation could be really cool for situations where you kind of want 'counters' applied to a portable card. Could have a base-station that allows you to 'add' the qualities of one card to another target card, or 'evolve' a pokemon, etc.

[eru]

> In terms of making a game with them, I think a design where the pins are on the face of the card may be useful. I want to be able to 'draw' a card without knowing what is on it.

That would work. But you can also make that work with current hardware (I think): you just need a delay between pressing the button and the screen changing? So that the player can press the button, pick up the card, and five seconds later, it's revealed.

[jonahss]

Ah yeah, originally I wanted the contacts to wrap around the edges of the card, so then you can stack them and address whichever one in the stack you want.

Maybe I should raise the priority on that.

Definitely I'm into the idea of evolving, or breeding cards like pokemon. Powerup or 'combine' would be cool too.

[blindseer]

If you could put even a single button on the "card" itself, then it'll open up a whole layer of game design.

This isn't an actual game, but I'm thinking it would be great to pick a card face up that's "red" and be able to make a decision to turn it into "cyan". Others could pick "green" and "blue" face up, but can click a button to turn it to something else, and then the game resolves itself when everyone reveals it. Like if everyone can discuss and if everyone reveals the primary colors everyone wins.

I'm sure there's interesting game mechanics you can come up with when you give a decision to the player.

Additionally, I think this could make an interesting programmable suite of games. You don't have to sell just one game.

[jonahss]

Agree on the suite of games, just like a deck of cards :)

Ah, the cards have buttons next to them on the base. I figured they could display icons on the card next to each button (each spot on the base has 3 right now). I call it the 'ATM' style UX.

[riskable]

I read a lot of these comments and people are thinking about traditional card games and electronic games of the past that are kinda sorta similar (but not really). They're missing the ONE HUGE ADVANTAGE of epaper displays: They don't need power.

It seems the big assumption everyone's making in the comments is that the displays will just stay there on the electronics box. The reality is that you can refresh the display and then take it back into your hand. You could even trade it with other players while disconnected.

Furthermore, these displays can be refreshed hundreds of thousands of times (some can do millions) and therefore can last a lot longer than regular cards. They're also stupidly cheap in bulk! Example of a cheap NFC-powered one: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803070283516.html (not the best example since it's kinda thick but you can get much thinner ones around the same price).

You just need to come up with some example games that take advantage of the trading dynamic. Also, if you're up to the engineering it would be neat if you could use one epaper "card" to modify another one. Much like how in many card games you can add an "enchantment" or "modifier" style card on top of another to give it additional capabilities.

I also recommend adding a cover or shutter to the cards so that they can be refreshed without the other players seeing what it is. Once the card is back in your hand you can move the cover out of the way and see what you got. Alternatively, you could make it so that the cards refresh their displays upside down. That way you can refresh it without anyone seeing what's there.

[jonahss]

Yeah!

A few comments have mentioned being able to refresh the cards while upside down, or covered by another. Maybe my next prototype can put the contacts on the edges and have them wrap around or pass through, so they work on both sides.

That will be a bit more complexity for fabrication, but sounds like a fun project.

[bckr]

I really like this and look forward to future iterations.

For anyone curious, the symbol made by the contacts is the Tree of Life from the kabbalah

[jonahss]

Yeah, I'm going for an occult/mysticism/witchy vibe.

Magic the Gathering has a monopoly on fantasy, and the cyberpunk genre is played out. Plus I want the inner-workings to be somewhat mysterious.

I had a lot of fun thematically laying out the contacts. For example: Keter is VCC and Malchut is GND

[suilied]

I love this. I dabble a bit in electronics as well as tabletop wargames and have always dreamed of having an interactive table with "moving" terrain, doors that open/close, LED's indicating some status of an objective, rotating walkways, that sort of thing. I think if you're plynth interface can be opensourced or licensed even, that you can do more than just play card games. How about track your games that support said interface? Wins, losses, draws, rewards. Not sure what the storage capacity is of the cards, but I see possibilities more in the form of combining Amiibo's with Steam's social features like achievements and the workshop.

[jtolmar]

This is very neat!

I don't think traditional board games would be interested unless you got the price down very very low ($2/unit or less).

I think you could make something happen if you marketed and packaged it as a "board game console" though. Like a fixed number of cards and larger boards, plus some sort of base station or phone app that'll flash everything to the starting state of a game of your choice. Then people buy new games digitally from you, same as a modern video game console.

(I'd be interested in the game dev facing API and writing some games for such a thing, so let me know if you're pursuing it and we can swap contact info.)

[jonwest]

That’s a great idea! Rather than selling it as a single game, sell it as a platform that people can build on top of. There’s a pile of potential in that.

[jonahss]

Yes please! Email me? [email protected]

[xrd]

This is really cool.

When the pandemic started, it seemed like there was an opportunity to build games where you still are participating in physical space, but certain aspects of the game are shared across a network and then transform back into something that occupies physical space. I thought that could be something like AR but your cards open up other doors.

It would be fascinating to have a deck that shares cards in multiple distant places, with people playing the game from far away but connected through your cards.

Adding an element of time delay to the synchronization of the deck would be fun too.

Please provide a way to follow along on your progress, like a mailing list! Such a great project.

[jonahss]

Oh! I've got a mailing list signup on wyldcard.io !

Should have added that call-to-action to my post; *facepalm

Your idea is kind of like the hologram chess that Ed plays in Cowboy Bebop

[8note]

My friends and I did that with gloomhaven.

You have your local deck and player, and then the actual board is on TTS

[vegasje]

This is incredible! I'm so excited to see what you do with this in the future.

May I ask what e-ink displays you're using?

[jonahss]

Bought off Alibaba, I think they're so cheap because they're designed for grocery store shelf price tags.

Good Display GDEW029T5D