The Printer’s Offer

Sometime around 2010, a printer at Tokyo Game Market offered Seiji Kanai a deal: sixteen cards, cheap. The kind of offer a designer with ambitions might decline. Kanai, who had spent years making conventional card games for Japan’s doujin convention circuit, took it.

The constraint became a crucible. His first attempt, RR: Regality and Religion, was a two-player abstract for the 500-yen (~$5) challenge — the format that asked Japanese indie designers to create something worth playing for less than a cup of coffee. He iterated. R (later BraveRats) followed in 2011 — another sixteen cards, this time simultaneous revelation with asymmetric powers.

Then, in May 2012, Love Letter.

Sixteen cards. One rule per card. Draw one, play one. A game that fit in a velvet pouch and sold over three million copies worldwide. It won the Japan Boardgame Prize, multiple Golden Geek Awards, the Origins Award, landed on the Spiel des Jahres recommended list, and ignited a micro-game movement that reshaped how the industry thought about component count.

The printer’s deal became the most productive constraint in modern tabletop design.