A red ribbon falls to the marble floor of a brand-new city hall. A new era of fellowship and brotherhood has dawned in Strongstead Hills, but beneath the surface, evil lurks unseen. Villains lurk in every shadow, while heroes proudly stand on every precipice. When the forces of ill will begin to become more aggressive, it's time...
Calling All Heroes is a collaborative effort, with many artists contributing to a series of trading cards! Backers will receive goodies like stickers, booster packs, limited edition rare cards, and some Backerkit-exclusive swag like promotional cards!
This collaboration brings artists worldwide together and tells the story of Strongstead Hills, a city infested with lowly villains and full of mighty heroes. Feel free to click the banner below and join the Discord server for updates and sneak peeks!
Since we're still in the prototype and playtesting phase, extensive refining of the rules and card interactions is still in progress, however, the general gameplay is simple: You have six characters that are separate from your deck.
These six characters can be played at certain points in the game, so not all are in play simultaneously. You have a deck of 60 other cards with supports, items, backdrops (stadiums), and gadgets (tools). This deck, alongside your characters, works to boost your characters or hinder your opponent.
Let's take a closer look at what each character card contains.
First, the essential elements of a card, AKA, the functional pieces.
Starting with the character name, that's who the card is of. You can't have a character with the same name as other characters in your deck, so characters are 1 per deck.
Second, are the hit points. This is how much damage a card can take before being removed from play.
Next is escalation, a unique mechanic of this game. Escalation refers to the turn at which you can put this character into play. Some conditions may allow these characters to come in earlier or later, and each deck must have a character that has an escalation of 0, otherwise, it is considered forfeit. This is because having no characters at the start of the game means your opponent has no one to target, and due to escalation limits, you cannot play your higher-cost characters during setup. This situation would result in what would be considered a "mulligan" in other card games, however, due to the unique nature of characters being separate from the deck, there would be no resolution. (A mulligan is when you draw no playable cards in your starting hand.)
Each character also has access to a mix of abilities and attacks. Abilities are passive and always are in effect unless negated by another ability or item. Attacks can be used once per turn, and deal damage to your opponent's active character. Occasionally, attacks can also have secondary effects.
Finally, the keywords. This is who, what, and how your character is. Keywords can be described more thoroughly as who your character works with, what your character is, and how your character thinks. These keywords affect their interactions with items, other characters, and themselves. These keywords are, in order, Faction, Species, and Alignment.
Faction is who your character works with. Are they with the heroes? The villains? For now, these will be the only two factions; however, as the game progresses, more factions will become available.
Species is what your character is. A human? Robot? Even living cartoons exist in the city of Strongstead Hills! Within the eight categories of species, anyone can be just about anything!
Alignment is how your character thinks. They may do good things but have an evil ulterior motive that makes them "evil" aligned. Or a vigilante like Robin Hood could be considered a villain through theft, but works to help people through dubious practices.
Back both Calling All Heroes and Troubleseekers, and get an exclusive set of cards with Troubleseekers' characters from me and an adventure featuring Valiance and Duchess from them!
A pack of stickers to show your support for the game! Comes with 6 stickers. More designs will be revealed as the campaign goes on!
A small box of 6 booster packs to start your journey and collection.
A ready-to-play deck with 6 characters and 60 support cards, with 3 booster packs to customize it. Choose from the hero or villain deck in the survey after the campaign. A massive box of 24 packs to supplement your collection or decks!
A box containing two starter decks for you and a friend to play! It also comes with 10 packs to really get you going. Get a little bit of everything! A pack of stickers, a playmat, two starter decks, and a booster box! A games store demo kit that contains everything you need to get started with Calling All Heroes! You'll be ready to go with 6 booster boxes (144 packs!), 14 starter decks, 6 playmats, 10 packs of stickers, and a custom banner with your store's name.
🎲 WELCOME TO POCKETOPIA—a celebration of portable easy-to-learn tabletop games featuring 50+ creators launching together on BackerKit from March 13 - April 3!
🏆 Here’s how you can earn exclusive event rewards:
Cross-Collab Freebies: Look for projects marked as Cross-Collab partners! Back both projects to earn a FREE reward from each creator. The more pairs you support, the more freebies you collect!
Pocketopia Dice Bag: Back 6 projects or more to unlock this exclusive reward, surveyed and shipped by BackerKit.
⚔️ Rewards at a glance:
2 FREE rewards for every Cross-Collab pair you back (one from each creator!)
1 FREE limited edition Pocketopia 2025 Dice Bag when you back 6+ projects
⭐ PRO TIP: Maximize your freebies by supporting Cross-Collab pairs! For example, support 3 Cross-Collab pairs (6 projects) to earn up to 6 exclusive freebies while unlocking the Dice Bag!
*Only pledges to physical reward tiers or main digital offerings (if no physical items are offered) qualify towards earning these limited FREEBIES. Please refer to individual project pages for unlock requirements.
