About This Game

The Cup is a free 1v1 creature card battler and roguelike deckbuilder, broadcast live: real animals and cryptids, and dice printed on every card that rolls. You coach a survivor and a line of three creatures. Every turn you play one card and make one attack, then the die TV decides how hard it lands while BroadcASH and BOBcast call it from the booth. Knock out all three of theirs and the match is yours.

THE DIE DECIDES. YOU CHOSE THE DIE.

Every creature is printed Safe, Swingy or Jackpot. Safe hits for the number on the card. Swingy rolls. Jackpot can miss outright, and a natural can wipe a creature off the board. You pick the risk when you draft, and everybody watches it land. There is no skip button, because the animations are the interface.

EVERY CARD DOES EXACTLY WHAT IT SAYS

Any of your creatures can hit any of theirs. No lanes and no hidden rules: the card is the rule, and the feed spells out every hit, reflect and knockout as it happens. A dome that hands damage straight back. A bee that stings once and goes to the Pit for it. Three a side, and three to six minutes a match once you know the rules.

TONIGHT'S FIGHT CARD

• 59 contestants and 9 survivors from the United States, Canada and Mexico, every one a real animal or a cryptid, each with a checkable file

• THE ROAD: ten cases against invasive species in one run, with HALFTIME in the middle. Draft creatures and kits as you go, and a knockout is gone for the road

• Matches against the House, dealt or drafted, as many as you want

• Live 1v1 on Steam from the full release on December 3

• Every match written to tape, with highlights and replays

• A shelf of mugs to earn, and a score composed in-house

THE STATE OF THE BROADCAST

Every painting on a card is commissioned from a human artist and credited on the card, one creature at a time, and the creatures still waiting wear placeholder art. The invaders are real photographs. The survivors' kits are drawn from public-domain history, with each source one click away.

The demo is out now: THE ROAD, the tutorial and matches against the House, offline. Card art by @chioart08, @prayogaardip, Ondřej Tichý, @tmcglynnart and Awesam. The game's text and voices are in English. [i]A broadcast of the Galactic Athletics Commission.

AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

The two announcer voices, BroadcASH and BOBcast, are generated with ElevenLabs from scripts we write and edit. Every line is approved, leveled and listened to before it ships, and the same voices appear in our trailers. The creature sound effects are also generated with ElevenLabs. Every other sound has a written provenance record, including the music.

NO CARD ART IS GENERATED. Every painting is commissioned from a human artist and credited on its card: ChioArt, Prayoga, Ondřej Tichý, Tom McGlynn and Awesam so far. Creatures still waiting for theirs wear emoji placeholders. The invaders are real photographs and the survivors' kit art is public-domain line art, each credited in the game. Some marketing and store copy is drafted with AI assistance and edited before use.