2025 · (Web published)
Every tribe on Apsyntion has the same origin story - the same apocrypha retold for generations. That once, our people came from the stars. That their homeworld was lost, swallowed by Wormwood, and the ancestors built the arks in a last desperate gasp, releasing them to the sky like so many seeds in the wind. That the people of the ark, so roughly deposited on the soil of an alien Eden, fought for the right to rule this new world and remake it in their own image.
Sovereign is an expandable card game where each player controls a burgeoning far-future civilization at the brink of war. You will build an empire from the ground up, managing civilians and military units, along with facilities unique to your faction's way of life.
Each player controls one of ten factions, with a personal ideology represented by a prebuilt deck. A deck has 30 unique cards specific to that faction, and 20 cards called Echoes- remnants of the ark that brought humanity to this world. Score ten Echoes and you win the game, but an Echo is always vulnerable in the meantime, whether it's in your hand or on the table. You'll defend your own Echoes with units and facilities you build, or steal them from opponents by attacking where you think the Echoes are hiding. Forge them yourself or steal them from other players- build or conquer, it's up to you.
The game is designed so that the backs of the cards are used as much as the front, since each card back is used to track construction progress from turn to turn, without revealing the card underneath. Citizens are represented by double-sided tokens used initially for building cards, but when flipped become lower class workers, who might power facilities, or become soldiers to fuel your dominance.
Sovereign is great as a 2 player game, but optimized for 3-4, with an array of cards that can be used to hinder or help opponents - encouraging fragile, temporary alliances. The game combines the best elements from worker placement games and CCGs, to create a dynamic hybrid experience where a society can rise and fall in under 2 hours, with over 300 unique cards.
