Redditor one23abc and his little brother couldn’t afford card games like Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh when they were younger, so they made their own, and it’s wonderful.
Creature Cards is around 300 glorious hand-drawn examples of the power of children’s imagination. When I was a kid I used to build chess boards out of sticks and rocks. This is an entirely new level.
one23abc outlines the creation of the cards, the rules play (as he remembers them from a decade ago) and demonstrates how his handwriting and artistic skills haven’t change one bit over the years over in his epic Reddit thread.
Here are some of my favorite cards:
He was 10. It was a valiant try.
The most powerful card in the set, a “manafestation of all darkness.”
The amount of thought that went into these is outstanding.
Check out more of the brothers’ work in galleries here and here, and think of them if you ever find yourself too broke to have fun.
To contact the author of this post write to fahey@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter@bunnyspatial.