From a laminated prototype on a kitchen table to a digital board game. Built by two people around full time jobs, and soon heading back to the table.
The idea was born on a holiday in Albania: a game about running a business with no scruples, where everyone acts at the same time and lawsuits and shitstorms are simply part of doing business. We designed the cards, printed them, laminated them and played it at the table. Then life got in the way for a couple of years. In 2026 we dug it out again, and this time we built it for real.
Back then the game was called Nådeløs Ledelse, roughly Merciless Management. The board and every card were designed at home, printed, laminated and sleeved. It is still in our basement, and it still works.
Fully playable from start to finish: drafting, lawsuits, year-end settlements, all of it. It worked. That was also the kindest thing you could say about it.
That same evening the game got its dark look. For a brief moment we honestly thought this was good enough. We laugh about that now.
Portraits on the cards, coloured frames, opponents you can actually keep an eye on. The game started looking like something you would want to touch.
The table grew up: the fanned hand of watercolour cards, the income and expense tracks, the opponent panels. From here on, every single evening was about the details. The same icon for the same thing everywhere, the same gold, the same visual language on every screen. This screenshot was taken at four in the morning, which probably tells you most of what you need to know about that period.
We built an entire courtroom in parchment: a painted table, leather chairs, attack arrows between the seats. It was beautiful. Two days later we threw the whole bright look out, because the rest of the game had gone dark and golden. It still stings a little, and it was still the right call.
The same game, six weeks later: painted emblems, 220+ illustrated cards, 14 voiced entrepreneurs, courtroom cutscenes and a table you can play solo, hotseat or online.
After three fiscal years the estate is settled. The finale is one of the screens we are proudest of today, and it started life as a table of black numbers on a cream background.
This game started as cardboard on a table, and that is how it is meant to end up again. The digital game is free, and the next step is a physical board game on Kickstarter. The 2022 cards are waiting in the basement as our yardstick.
Ruthless Returns was built by two people with full time jobs and a kid. No publisher, no budget, no art department. Ten years ago a game with this much art, sound and testing behind it would have needed a studio and a bank loan. We had neither, and our child's savings account stayed exactly where it was.
It was possible because AI exists, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. It is the reason this game exists at all instead of living forever as a folder of notes.
The part we are proudest of is not the art. It is the balancing. We have run over 10,000 simulated playthroughs and let the numbers tell the truth: which cards won too often, which ones never got played, and which combinations quietly broke the game. Then we fixed them. Two people could never have tested this game that thoroughly by hand.
The art and audio are AI assisted, directed and picked by us until they felt like ours. Some people will not play a game made this way. We understand, and we would rather tell you straight than hide it.
Ruthless Returns is a game about using every edge the system will give you. It felt fitting to use ours.