by Mike Peacock

“On your turn, activate all of your faceup card powers”

That’s the hook of Flippers, a hook that causes penguin chaos with every card. In this diary, I’d like to waddle through the challenging path that led me to one simple hook.

It started with two targets: 1) High player interactivity, and 2) cool card powers.

To achieve the first target, I immediately went for a central play area, something that all players can contribute to building and influence – a good start. Using an empty play area, players would add cards and arrange them in a line. Cards at the start of the line are worth a larger amount of points than at the end. A nice and easy concept.

Perhaps the cards are people queuing for fast food or a roller coaster, and you can play your card powers to cut in, distract or move up along the queue.

It was a concept which I really enjoyed, but playtesting brought up some replayability flaws also, as British as it is, queueing isn’t fun. Being able to either cut in or move up and down the line with your cards brought an interesting constraint and an enjoyable challenge, but I couldn’t help feel that there was more potential in there somewhere. So I swapped out the queue and tested out a grid. Now here’s where the game started to find its happy feet.

Bring On The Grid
Having players place cards into a grid allowed for a lot of freedom, yet placing a card along the edge of another card, with no start or end, what are players competing for? Perhaps hit points or a ‘castle defence’ style game? I tested out something that I could get my head around and measure, so each card had a point value. A card with a strong power has a greater influence on the grid but will be worth few points, and vice versa. Whoever has their cards within the goal area of the grid at the end of the game earns that many points from their cards. Cards would push, pull and swap others, as if it were like a 12-player wrestling match!

Testing proved that the goal area didn’t feel right, but a larger issue was that no one wanted to start! If players want to use card powers and have cards in the scoring zone at the end, no one wants to go first on an empty grid! It seemed like a wasted turn. So I introduced a points chest, something that is movable and claimable by the end of the game. This was a big turning point in the game design, so much so that I scrapped the goal zone and worked further on the points chest and how card powers can manipulate it.

Blueprints of player powers and card abilities
Feel The Power, Kronk!
Ideally, every card has a power, and depending on when and where it is placed, it will change the grid of cards in some way. Each card will also have an arrow, clearly showing which card is being affected by the card’s power. As players pick and play cards, columns and rows started to form. Powers could alter the point value on other cards and even flip them over or remove them from the game. When the game is over, add up the faceup points to see who wins! This part was the most fun to test out, creating new card combos and even messing about with player powers for some spicy asymmetry. The game was fun and brought players into a nice decision space, but I stumbled across a player power that changed everything.

Activate all of your faceup cards on every turn.

This brought a challenge of its own: how can I get my cards into the right position to attack my opponent but make sure that I don’t mess up my next turn? I had so much fun with this player power that I thought – this is a game all in itself!

The first prototype cards of Flippers
Tear It Down, Build It Again
With this ‘Activate All’ concept, I found that not only was it a fun challenge to use as a player, but designing card powers that work within it was genuinely exciting and joyful. The card powers should be simple to understand and easy to use; that was a must. Originally, the powers were a bit word-heavy, describing what to do to a neighbouring card’s value at the end of the game. It also led to a big discussion over calculating each player’s total score, which just felt too clunky. So I decided to scrap the whole ‘card point value’ aspect. I admit, I was nervous at this point, so much had changed from what I originally had in mind, but I plodded on.

To replace these card values, I added ‘Player Hit Points’. This way, any plus or minus effects can take place immediately rather than at the end of the game. Instead of the cards themselves being the points, players start with points and can gain more from the points chest. This felt like a win; what a relief. It took quite a lot of time balancing the powers, but a summary of the final card powers included in the game are listed below.

Captain – Earn 1 Bonus point from the Point Chest
Flip – Flip over a card
Turn – Turn a card 90 degrees clockwise
Replace – Take the position of the targeted card
Switch – Change the position of the two adjacent cards.
Bump – Move all cards in one direction by one space
Block – Prevent a card from performing its power
+ 1 Point – Add 1 point to the targeted player
– 2 Points – Remove 2 points from the targeted player

Final cards with wooden fish tokens for point markers!
Controlling The Chaos
On a player’s turn, they will play one card from their hand and then activate that power. On the next turn, do the same but then activate the card powers played from the previous rounds. This builds up a chain of events, a knock-on effect that all players can read and map out as the game continues. When there is more than one card power to activate, the player has full choice of which card to activate in whatever order they wish, but they must activate all of their cards.

The grid provides players with full control of where they wish to play their cards. The power activation allows players to make tactical decisions on how to manipulate the grid to maximise points. However, card powers will affect all cards, even your own. A master plan on one turn can backfire as an opponent changes the grid of cards, causing you flip, block or even force your own team to lose 2 points!

This is where the game really started to shine. Once players understood the card powers and the golden ‘Activate All’ rule, they seemed to embrace the chaotic turns as they played. Seeing players plan, shout and laugh at the continuous card play felt like the game didn’t need much more adding to it.

After a successful pitch to Molinarius Games Ltd, we brought in a team variant, allowing players to buddy up and added multiple ‘points chests’ to add variety between games. We discussed themes ranging from wrestlers, pirates, beavers, kings vs queens, cats vs dogs and landed on penguins vs seals.

Flippers was born, and after a successful Kickstarter, the game launched fully at the UK Games Expo 2025 and has been causing chaos on ice ever since!