Lineages
Designer-cited ancestry from board games to digital hits — the “Smash Up → Marvel Snap” pattern, mapped across the corpus. Confidence flags: H = designer-stated, M = analyst-attributed, L = speculative.
Reference corpus for the "next Dominion → Slay the Spire" pattern hunt. Confidence: H = designer-stated; M = analyst-attributed; L = speculative.
| # | Digital game (year/scale) | Tabletop source (mechanic) | Transformation | Confidence | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Slay the Spire (2019, ~10M+) | Dominion / Ascension (deck-building) + Netrunner (asymmetric) | Removed shuffling friction; fused with FTL-style branching map. Co-founder Giovannetti ran a board game shop. | H | Game Developer IGF interview |
| 2 | Marvel Snap (2022, ~80M DL) | Smash Up (faction decks at locations) + Backgammon doubling cube → "snap" | 6 turns / 3 lanes; designer Kent-Erik Hagman cites Paul Peterson's Smash Up + Backgammon's doubling cube directly. | H | Apple Behind the Design, GDC Vault |
| 3 | Inscryption (2021, ~3M+, GOTY noms) | MtG (sacrifice mechanic) + Pokémon TCG | Built during Ludum Dare 43 ("sacrifices must be made") after Mullins re-entered MTG. Act 2 directly mimics Pokémon TCG GBC. | H | Thumbsticks, Screen Rant |
| 4 | Dorfromantik (2021, ~1M, German GOTY) | Carcassonne (tile placement, edge matching) | Replaced competitive scoring with infinite zen "quest" stack. Later got an officially licensed BG adaptation. | H | Game Developer interview |
| 5 | Dicey Dungeons (2019) | Dream Quest (digital, MTG-derived) + Yahtzee-style die assignment | Static "card slot" loadout instead of card draw — manages RNG layering. | H | Game Developer IGF |
| 6 | Balatro (2024, ~5M, GOTY) | Big Two (Cantonese shedding) + poker as theme veneer; structural ancestor: Luck Be a Landlord | LocalThunk explicitly cites Big Two + LBaL as the actual seeds; poker is just onboarding skin. | H | Game Informer, Game Developer |
| 7 | Loop Hero (2021, ~1M first month) | Carcassonne / Kingdom Builder / Deus (tile-laying with adjacency) | Tiles become generators of enemies, not just scoring; auto-resolving combat compresses placement. | M | Goonhammer analysis, Windows Central interview |
| 8 | Stacklands (2022, ~2M) | Agricola (worker placement) + solitaire stacking | Spatial stacking = action declaration; village builder via card-slot grammar. | H | Game Developer interview |
| 9 | Reigns (2016, ~3M+) | Tinder swipe (UX) + monarchy management | Swipe = decision; resource bars = monarchy stats. Pitched as "Tinder + Game of Thrones." | H | Inverse, Game Developer |
| 10 | Card Crawl / Card Thief (2015/2017, multi-M DL) | German hobby card games (Rauers's stated principle) | Single-screen 4×4 / 3×3 grid puzzles; hand-management down to a phone-tap atom. | H | Pocket Gamer.biz |
| 11 | TFT / Hearthstone Battlegrounds / Underlords (2019, 30M+ MAU TFT) | Dota Auto Chess mod → mahjong + chess | Eight-player parallel arena; shop draft + economy turns mahjong-style hand-building into PvP. | H | Game Developer on Battlegrounds = card auto chess |
| 12 | Among Us (2018, peak 500M MAU) | Mafia / Werewolf (social deduction) + The Thing (film) | Tasks = anti-griefing busywork that lets innocents prove themselves; spatial proximity replaces narrative GM. | H | 80.lv on Innersloth, Game World Observer |
| 13 | Cultist Simulator (2018) | Tarot decks (symbolic card grammar) | Real-time card-laying replaces parser nouns; "verb cards" + "noun cards" combine to spawn outcomes. | H | GamesBeat interview |
| 14 | Citizen Sleeper 1/2 (2022/2024) | Blades in the Dark (clocks, action dice pools, position/effect) | Dice rolled at day start — chance becomes resource you allocate; clocks become UI primitives. | H | Game Developer, Rascal |
| 15 | Roguebook (2021) | MtG (Garfield's "fat deck" thesis) | Garfield was design advisor; explicitly removed card-removal; pair-of-heroes hand sharing is novel. | H | TCGplayer interview |
| 16 | Legends of Runeterra (2020) | MtG (alternating priority, mana, instant-speed reactions) | Direct port of MTG's pass-priority combat to phone form; pro MTG players (Steve Rubin) on team. | H | Inven Global interview |
| 17 | Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles (2023) | StS skeleton + dice deckbuilding (Quarriors-adjacent) | Cards → custom dice; introduces dual-track damage (purification/corruption). | M | Indiecator interview |
| 18 | Cobalt Core (2023) | Cards prototyped on Tabletop Simulator; influences: StS, Into the Breach, Inscryption | Ship-position movement makes card targeting spatial; Inscryption-style talking-card hook. | H | Turn Based Lovers interview |
| 19 | Luck Be a Landlord (2021) | Slot machines (real-world reels) + StS structure | Slot reel becomes a deck you curate; anti-capitalist satirical frame. | H | Wikipedia |
| 20 | Backpack Hero (2023) | Deus Ex inventory grid (designer-cited) + Tetris (analyst) + StS structure | Spatial inventory becomes the deck; item adjacency triggers replace card synergies. | H/M | Shacknews interview |
| 21 | Mahjong Soul (2018, 10M+) | Riichi mahjong (1920s Japanese) | Anime onboarding + ranked global ladder turns regional hobby into international competitive scene. | H | Wikipedia |
| 22 | Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel (2022, 60M+ DL) | Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG (1999) | Removes physical card scarcity; ladders the entire 25-year card pool. | H | (Konami official) |
Patterns to internalize
- The board-game-shop pipeline is real: Giovannetti (StS), Brode (Snap), Rauers (Tinytouchtales), Garfield (Roguebook), Rubin (LoR) all played seriously before designing.
- The recurring "digital twist" is friction removal: no shuffling (StS), no card removal (Roguebook), pre-rolled dice (Citizen Sleeper), no mana curve (Snap).
- Tabletop RPGs are under-mined vs CCGs. Citizen Sleeper proved Blades in the Dark's clocks port well. Forged in the Dark, PbtA moves, Trophy — all underexplored.
- Tile placement still has headroom. Dorfromantik and Loop Hero are nearly the only hits. Carcassonne / Kingdom Builder / Cascadia / Calico — clean lineage template, few entries.
- Push-your-luck genre is just crystallizing. Quacks / Can't Stop / Incan Gold maps onto Balatro / LBaL / Slot-likes — early days.
Negatives worth recording (don't waste time on these "lineages")
- Mini Metro — designer cites Tube planning, not Ticket to Ride
- Vampire Survivors — Magic Survival mobile + Castlevania, no tabletop ancestor
- Wildfrost — digital-to-digital (StS-adjacent), no strong tabletop citation
- Slipways — designer cites 4X video games, not Race for the Galaxy