by Leonardo Alese

Hi! I am Leonardo, the a-bit-of-everything at Tablescope, including game design, taxes, app development, booth setup, editing, and community. But never art, I don’t do art.

This diary focuses on the decisions we made on how physical components interact with the companion software of Light Speed: Arena, the party game where players strategically aim lasers in real time and snap a picture to let the app unfold the battle. As this is quite a new territory, I hope our development process can spark an interesting conversation.

To provide some context, Light Speed: Arena reimplements the 2003 Light Speed by James Ernest and Tom Jolly, published by Cheapass Games. This is a unique card game where everyone slams their ships onto the table and then, using rulers and tokens, traces laser beams printed on the cards to see who hit whom. It was chaotic, clever, and unlike anything else at the time. But also fiddly and slow in the resolution phase.

In the Tablescope version, besides the photo-assisted resolution, we introduced new gameplay and customization options, components, and a new theme. This edition was funded and improved through Kickstarter in 2024, started retail at the end of 2025, and was freshly nominated for the Golden Geeks!

Let’s now dive into what cardboard does in Light Speed: Arena.

Cardboard is your input device
In a digital hybrid game, someone or something has to tell the app what to do.

We began with classic app menus and toggles for selecting game modes, but we quickly noticed a fundamental problem: there was no visual connection between what the app knew and what was happening on the table. It felt like an extra, detached layer that players had to manage mentally. That disconnect pushed us to rethink the entire setup philosophy.

Instead of asking players to select modes in the app, we explored whether the physical components themselves could communicate the game state. Over time, we shifted sponsors, team mode, unleashed factions, and more into purely physical configurations. If something is visible in the final photo, it is active. There are no hidden settings. This approach made the experience more consistent and more intuitive. Players express the game through cardboard, and the app simply reads reality.

Cardboard is harmless
A game that works through a photo has to look a bit weird, right? Right, Anakin?

In the beginning, we assumed so and decided it was perfectly fine if Light Speed: Arena had to look different. If the tech needed visible markers or unusual layouts to work properly, then so be it. Early prototypes reflected this mindset and showcased the flavor of an augmented reality demo project more than a memory-making board game.

As the system became more robust, we started challenging that assumption. We asked ourselves, “What if we removed that? And this?” From there, we began removing every visual crutch and hiding all detection information directly inside the artwork. Right now, the slightly peculiar feature someone might notice is the white border around the tiles. Still, we worked to match it with the comic-style art of the game. After all, even Magic: The Gathering cards used to have white borders…

During demos, we usually don’t tell players about the picture part. We carry a rubber band in the pocket and, after they finish placing ships, we pretend to start measuring lasers one by one. The terror on their faces is priceless, only topped by the wonder when the app instantly brings the battle to life.

Cardboard is independent
By teasing people and seeing how naturally they played without knowing about the app, we realized we wanted cardboard to not only look harmless but also to be fully independent of any non-game-related setup, avoiding what we feel is one of the most frustrating pitfalls a hybrid game can create: realizing the app doesn’t work with the way you are playing.

If a solution required players to prepare the table “for the app,” we would not use it. We avoided anchor tiles, special playmats, fixed orientations, and any requirements of the kind “place this here so the photo can see it.”

Only then could the app feel like a moment of magic rather than a requirement. You just need to stick to the game rules. Or not, which brings us to the next section.

Cardboard is sandbox
The harsh reality is that players bend rules, skip components, mix expansions, and generally do whatever feels fun in the moment. That means the app will often face a table state that is “wrong.” What should it do in those situations? No base of a color? No asteroids? Inconsistent number of spaceships? At first, we considered warning players or blocking the resolution, which felt like the perfect recipe for frustration at the table.

After debating it for a long time, we eventually chose just to run the battle anyway. If players changed something, it is probably intentional. If they forgot something, let them continue. House rules are part of the soul of board gaming, and digital hybrids should embrace that freedom, too.

That is why the app never stops you before the battle. You take a picture, confirm it, and the resolution begins. From that moment on, the digital companion gives players a superpower no analog game can offer: it applies every rule perfectly. If anything truly breaks, it is probably a (rare) bug 😉

Tech is magic
It took us more than four years to refine, and in the end, we are just glad we can describe it with two simple words: it works. We still sometimes find it hard to believe that we can live-demo it in a crowded fair booth (looking at you, Meta…).

Conclusion
Is Light Speed: Arena perfect? Of course not. I still lose sleep over questions: How to strengthen the app-to-table communication? How to make it more natural? More concise?

What Light Speed: Arena ended up being, we hope, is a unique, accessible board game that attempts a new route for digital-hybrid entertainment, with a step forward in tech and UX.

More importantly, we hope the approach sparks ideas for other designers as well. I myself look forward to seeing where we can go from here!

Thanks for reading, and see you in the Arena!

Bonus. The Telegram quest.
Between the very early prototype and Light Speed: Arena, there was one more geeky and extremely useful step. After the original publisher gave us the green light, and before we had any plan to make Light Speed: Arena, we built and released a two-player print-and-play version of the original Light Speed played through a Telegram* bot.

You would play the game, take a picture, send it to the chat, and it would reply with a visualization of the battlefield, a fast log, or a full commentary. And yes, the silly/trash commentary idea from Light Speed: Arena was already there back then.

With around 1,000 players and a ton of feedback collected, the Light Speed Telegram bot became a critical building block for everything that followed. It still works today, but honestly, you might prefer the free demo print-and-play version of Light Speed: Arena itself available on BGG 😉

*A WhatsApp-like messaging app