A bolder way to play
Zelzi
Your Cards. Your Rules.
Turn a photo into a playable card. Build a deck around it. Choose the rules you want to play by. Then play a real match against the computer, on your phone, with no account and no internet.
In development iPhone · testing on TestFlight
The idea
The player is the creator
Most card games hand you their cards. Zelzi starts with yours. A photo of a pet, a family member or your own drawing becomes a good-looking card that takes part in a real match on the first day. The game supplies the structure. Your cards supply the meaning.
Pick a photo, frame it, name it, choose how it plays. Six included backgrounds if you would rather start without a photo.
Your new card joins a starter deck at once, and the Deck Workshop lets you shape any deck, with every rule it breaks explained and a fix beside it.
Pick the contract before every match: Sandbox, Standardized or Free for All. Same cards, different promises.
A full match against the computer, Beginner or Normal, in portrait or landscape, with a walkthrough the first time you sit down at either table.
Two games
Went’z Siege and King’z Fall
Went’z Siege
A deck of 20 to 30 cards, two starter decks (Dawn Watch and Night Tide), and a match won over rounds. The first game Zelzi shipped, and the one the whole engine was built around.
King’z Fall
A second game on a 3 by 5 board, with its own starter decks (Lantern Line and Thorn Tide). One personal card can carry a profile for each game: the same art and the same identity, with the numbers each game needs.
Both games come with 32 original starter cards made for Zelzi. More modes are planned once these two are complete.
Three ways to play
Same cards, different promises
- Sandbox. Play with anything the engine can run. A card that breaks the budget is flagged, and still plays.
- Standardized. Reproducible, fair, versioned rules. Every card and deck fits a budget, and a card that does not shows the reason and the fix.
- Free for All. No budget, no caps, no warnings. Only what the engine cannot run is refused.
The contract never rewrites a card. A card that is not eligible for Standardized keeps its numbers; fixing it is your call, and the result screen always says which rules the match was played under.
Your phone, your cards
Nothing leaves the phone
Zelzi has no account, no sign-in and no server. The app makes no network connections of any kind. Your photos, cards, decks and match history stay on the phone, and deleting the app deletes them. Playing against another phone nearby is planned for later, and it will work over local Wi-Fi with both players agreeing before anything is shared.
Status
In development
Zelzi is being tested on TestFlight with a small group. Making a card, building a deck, choosing the rules and playing both games against the computer all work today. It is not yet on the App Store.
What comes next, in order: scanning physical cards with the camera and exporting your collection; an Expert computer opponent, pass-and-play on one phone and a replay viewer; then playing against a friend's phone nearby. Online play is a later question.
To hear when there is a version to try, write to contact@grcsac.com.