by Kitsune Games

Hi everyone! How’s it going? Nico here, co-creator of Guanteo along with Flor.

The starting point for Guanteo was: “I want a board where the cards fight each other.” Initially, they were going to be Yokais with superpowers, but as much as I love them, Japanese narratives are quite common. Since I train boxing, at some point, the planets just aligned in my head. (I’m not ruling out future games with Japanese narratives, though!)

The boxing theme allowed us to unify everything we had in mind: a board made of cards (our ring) and the presence of players on that ring, each with a deck of their own color. We had a ring and we were standing on equal ground, with 8 cards each—just like the minutes before a fight begins.

The Cognitive Challenge: Thinking Under Pressure
Just like when you’re in the ring, where “thinking” is hard because everything happens fast, in real-time, and you have to be able to respond. That’s how the idea of face-down cards came about—both yours and your opponent’s. If you don’t remember them, if you’re not fully engaged in the match, your mistakes will most likely have consequences.

In the first prototypes, the activation mechanic was “Oxygen.” The game asked you to discard an amount of oxygen from your hand equal to what the board card required to execute a punch—like saying, “you need air to keep fighting.” Later, we changed this to Power, as it was more intuitive iconographically and rationally. Thinking about oxygen makes sense, but it’s less adaptable to a game than thinking, “I’m hitting you with power.” So, the activation cost shifted to Power while keeping the same logic.

The Dance of Boxing and the Science of Memory
There was some back-and-forth in early playtesting to make it work. As we balanced the idea, extra elements emerged, like moving your own cards or your rival’s. While this costs a turn (and consequently some board control), it allows for different positioning. The “dance of boxing” appeared with these movements; it wasn’t just about punching anymore—it was about moving and distributing ourselves differently across the space.

Memory is a key point: to win, you must dominate 12 of the 16 ring cards with your own cards. This means you’ll have at least 10 cards on the board before the final blow. In terms of memory, that’s a lot.

Without boring you with technicalities, Working Memory has a limited retention capacity. For many years, it was set at the “Magic Number” of 7 ± 2 chunks of information. However, more recent studies indicate this was overestimated and the real number is closer to 4 ± 1. This is why the probable number of cards to remember in the game ranges between 5 and 9; you will always be forgetting one, and it’s up to your strategy to plan around that lack of information.

Rewards vs. Frustration
After several tests—and I must confess many losses to Flor—it became necessary to incorporate a way to recover information. We didn’t want an extremely frustrating experience; we wanted something that required focus but remained achievable. This is how Rewards were born. By successfully hitting your opponent, you not only eliminate their card and take that space, but the game rewards you by letting you check a number of your face-down cards again. This gives the Working Memory the “nudge” it needs to retain the info. We also added card drawing to rewards; the one who hits takes the advantage—just like in boxing.

What Happens When Memory Fails?
When we accidentally execute a hit against ourselves, our own card is eliminated, and we hand that board space to the opponent, losing out on rewards. This is the penalty for not remembering our cards. Because of this, this isn’t a game to play at a crowded event while chatting; it requires focus, memory, and strategic planning.

Aesthetics and the K.O. Octopus
The game’s aesthetic is simple; we focused on card values so players don’t have to spend too many cognitive resources understanding them. To activate a card, you discard the same value from your hand—which is the most eye-catching part—and we used real boxing punch names to go with it.

The K.O. card features an octopus. Why an octopus? I don’t know, really; I just imagined that an angry octopus with boxing gloves would be quite a hostile sight. A kangaroo just didn’t have that charm—it’s been done before.

We tried to take care of every detail, both in the cards and the box. We know perfection is impossible—my apologies for that—but please know we truly tried. In this regard, Lu from Macuco.art gave us a hand, as always, and her eye as an artist and designer helped everything look a bit better—thanks, Lu!

The Journey
This is our first game. Every step we took had its bumps, and we navigated them while learning. As I write this, we are about to publish our second one, and the progress is noticeable. We don’t necessarily know much more than before, but we’ve stopped making the same mistakes.
Since this is our first, I have to say that, personally, it has been a beautiful journey. Being able to think, have things not work, rethink, test, play, break everything with new ideas, and then break it all again—it’s incredibly fun. I insist on this a lot—you might read it elsewhere too—but in this digital age, where everything is immediate and being bored means scrolling through short videos on a platform, allowing ourselves to get bored and get creative is the best medicine.

Not to mention the satisfaction of bringing a game we invented and worked so hard on to a community that gives us great feedback and appreciates it. It is heartening to find people on the other side who enjoy sitting at a table, sharing a moment, and hitting “pause” on the noise we live in.

These are just some personal reflections. My outlook on everything I do is the same: to share, to play, to bring people closer, to become better friends, and, above all, to generate a positive impact on others. I found this in the world of board games; I am quite new to it and have a lot to learn, but it is definitely a world I want to stay in.

Anyway, if you want to know more about Guanteo, you can visit our website, check out the manual there, and find it in shops across Argentina (hopefully the world some day!).

Flor and I hope you liked it and enjoy it. We wish you many great matches and, above all, keep playing—it makes us better.

Thanks for reading! We really appreciate your time and would love to hear your thoughts

Official Website: guanteo.kitsunegames.ar English rulebook available HERE.