A Sonic the Hedgehog card game where speed is the mechanic, not the theme.
Sega has licensed plenty of Sonic tabletop. They are fun, light, and turn-based, and in every one of them you never actually move fast. Ring Rush fixes that. It makes speed a physical act at the table: players race a shared deck in real time, and the fastest, greediest, smartest hand wins.
Tabletop cards are as hot as they have ever been, and the winners are the brands people already love. Sonic is one of the few with that reach, evergreen and freshly back in the spotlight from the films. And because every game in this category is turn-based by design, none of them play in real time. A speed-first Sonic game would be the first of its kind, cheap to make, and easy to expand.
Each player brings their own deck and picks a Hero with HP and two signature abilities. A shared Ring deck sits in the center, its cards laid in a circle.
Every round splits in two: a real-time scramble for rings, then a tactical hero battle fueled by what you grabbed. Two to four players. You can win by knocking out rival heroes or by powering up to a Super state through Chaos Emeralds.
Own deck · Own hero · Shared ringEveryone plays at once, grabbing from the circle to earn rings and trigger enemies, hazards, and bosses.
Spend the rings you earned, fire abilities, and attack rival heroes.
Keeping the fast part and the thoughtful part in separate phases is what lets both shine without stepping on each other.
The ring circle is face up. You grab a card, use it to power a card from your hand, lay it face down, and sprint back for more. But there is a catch in how it ends.
You declare when you are done. The last player still grabbing sweeps everything left on the table, the leftover rings and every hazard with them.
Grab a ring, power a card, lay it down, repeat.
Stay in for more fuel, or call "done" to stop.
Bail early and you dodge the pile, but you hand your opponents the leftovers to power their attacks.
Last one grabbing sweeps it all, rings and hazards alike.
Spike traps and buzzsaws are shuffled through the deck. Each states its own cost: lose rings, lose HP, or both. Whoever sweeps the table last risks a faceful of them, so bailing early is a real defensive play.
Lose rings · Lose HPCertain cards and abilities flip hazards into weapons. That creates a whole archetype: the scrapper who wants to be last, scoops the entire pile, and turns the danger back on the table.
Turn the pile into a weaponPure give and take. Greed buys you fuel and risk. Caution keeps you clean but feeds your rivals. Both choices cost something, which is exactly what makes the call interesting.
Heroes have HP and two signature abilities. Rings power them, and ability cards from your deck extend what they can do.
Combat is Commander-style: point your attacks at rival heroes, defend, and race to either knock them out or charge into a Super state. The faster you grabbed, the more you can do here.
Abilities cost rings. A big scramble buys a big turn.
Each character plays differently. Sonic is pure speed, Knuckles is power, Tails is the strategizer.
Drop every rival hero, or charge to Super state through Chaos Emeralds.
Eggman and other bosses live in the ring deck. When one surfaces, it moves to the middle with an HP bar. Anyone can spend rings and abilities to grind it down.
Land the kill and claim a Chaos Emerald, a ring haul, or the boss as a trophy. Leave it standing at round end and it strikes the current leader, which quietly keeps any runaway player in check.
Rivals racing each other are suddenly forced to cooperate against Eggman, then turn on each other the second he is low. That tension is the most Sonic thing on the table.
Badniks are small enemies that surface from the deck. Grab one and you have a choice.
Defeat it on the spot by spending an ability, attack, or action, and take its small boon right away.
Bank it into your deck and cash it in later, when you next draw it from your own deck.
The catch: an un-cashed badnik sits in your deck as dead weight you might draw instead of something useful. Banking is a gamble, not free storage.
You grab your own rings, never another player. Any card two hands reach at once is simply burned. The speed is in the race, not in a scuffle.
The roster stays inside Sega game canon, so there are no rights tangles with comic or cartoon characters. Family-friendly, exactly like the games.
Everything here is designed to clear brand review on the first pass.
Expansion-ready by design. New hero packs, zone decks, and boss tiers extend the game for years, plus an optional collectible character line for recurring revenue.
We design card games for a living and we ship. Our last one, HAVOC: Gen Zero, funded in under 30 minutes on Kickstarter. The design here is one hundred percent human. We can build this with you quickly and without a heavy budget.
Let's make the Sonic game that's actually fast →