Popoki to PlayingCards

After designing interfaces for Soccer 54 and Foosball 74 in PlayingCards.io, I’m realizing Pōpoki fits there as well.

For years I’ve been testing games on Screentop, but the overhead for building is a lot less in PCIO. This is especially important for rapid prototyping in playtesting, which Screentop was really good for at the time. I would continue to use Screentop for games where the table space is not fixed, but for card games and fixed spaces, PCIO is more than enough.

Playtest: Pōpoki on PCIO

Early screenshot of the interface in PlayingCards.io.

Roadblock

What I would like to do is playtest further in the hope of being able to sell both Foosball 74 and Pōpoki at the September edition of Game Market West in San Jose CA.

I actually had given up on Pōpoki, though. When I first playtested in 2022 at Protospiel Online, it was mostly with other designers. The feedback I got back then was it was fine as a solo game but a bit abstract, too easy to win, and klunky with the dice (perhaps cards would be better?). But had I thought about making it at least a two-player game?

So I put it away when shortly after I hit a roadblock on being able to increase the player count.

Monthly Playtesting

Four years later and I had a conversation with another game designer, Courtney Laschkewitsch who runs playtests in nearby in Santa Cruz CA, and she encouraged me to reconsider everything. She convinced me there’s a market for solo games and suggested I make it a one-player game and then playtest it.

So I brought it back out in April 2026 where Courtney runs monthly playtests. I ran four different tests with non-designers and got marvelous feedback. I even got ideas on what they wanted in a two-person cooperative as well as competitive game.

Published April 17, 2026