The Best Designed Card Games on the Market Right Now

Here are some of the most innovative and fun card games you can buy today.

Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

When you spend most of a card game staring at your hand and trying not to betray your poker face, you appreciate a well-designed deck. It's a unique opportunity for an artist to create a collection of small designs that form a cohesive whole and to present the art in a casual form. Here are some card games whose designers took extra time to make them easy on the eyes, including trivia games, dedicated deck games, and standard decks of cards. Take a look at The Best Designed Card Games on the Market Right Now.

Gloom

Designers: Keith Baker and Scott Reeves
Buy It Now at Atlas Games, $24.95

The object of Gloom is to lower your characters' self-worth as much as possible. Using transparent modification cards, you can keep track of incidents, such as "was written out of the will" and "was pushed down the stairs," that befall your characters throughout the game. At the end of the game, the player whose family has the worst fate wins.

Rocca 3-D Playing Cards

Designer: Trulie Okamocek
Buy It Now at Aha Life, $28

This innovative deck of cards hails from Japan. The hexagonal cards each mimic the shape of a cube, allowing you to play three-dimensional games. They can be used for traditional card games or for the game invented by their creator, Okamocek.

Geek Battle

Designer: Forrest-Pruzan Creative
Buy It Now at Chronicle Books, $19.95

All those trips to the comic book store will pay off when you and your friends come head-to-head in Geek Battle, The Game of Extreme Geekdom. Compete in trivia categories that include sci-fi, fantasy, video games, science, and technology.

NYC IQ

Buy It Now at Chronicle Books, $19.95

Test your knowledge of the Big Apple with NYC IQ, the New York City trivia game. Show off your street smarts while learning new facts about the city.

52 Shades of Greed

Designers: Marc Scheff and Daniel Nyari
Buy It Now At 52 Shades of Greed, $24

52 Shades of Greed is more than a deck of cards. It's a critique of the American financial system in 52 illustrated cards that have been created by 28 artists. Featured on Business Insider, The New York Times, Buzzfeed, and more, 52 Shades of Greed is a standard deck that can be used to play Go Fish when not schooling you on the ins and outs of corporate greed.

One Deck of Cards Shapes

Designer: Tauba Auerbach
Buy It Now at Moca, $200

Only for the dedicated collector, artist Tauba Auerbach's limited edition deck of cards expands on her "50/50" project, which explores opposites and language. The deck itself is a carefully designed abstract set that includes themes of mathematics and geometry.

Gother Than Thou

Designer: R. Hunter Gough and E. Steen Comer
Buy It Now at Amazon, $3.99

Whether you were a goth in high school, or just secretly listened to screamo, it's hard not to find the brooding lifestyle kind of funny. Gother Than Thou: The Most Pretentious Card Game Ever Made allows you and your friends to out-goth one another by drawing and discarding event cards such as "dire fashion blunder" and "dreaded visit from mom." Featuring typically gloomy, black and white art and gothic lettering, the game will make you have a new appreciation for the goth lifestyle.

Type Trump Cards

Designer: Rick Banks
Buy It Now at Cool Hunting, $10

Have some serious opinions about typography? Battle it out with Type Trump, a game that pits statistics such as legibility, year of design, and foundry against one another. Only one font can come out on top.

Style Wars

Designer: David Sparshott
Buy It Now at Lawrence King, $9.95

Construct a menswear wardrobe out of cards, and then play against one another to see whose pieces have the most timeless appeal. Perfect for fashion aficionados, the Style Wars trump card game will keep you entertained and your style knowledge polished.

Battle of the Bikes

Designer: David Sparshott
Buy It Now at Lawrence King, $9.95

The perfect rainy day activity for bike geeks, this game allows you to battle bike specs against one another in order to see whose model comes out on top. Each card features one bike model and lists its specs such as price, top speed, and day-to-day practicality.

Creature Clash!

Designers: Tyler Panian and Angie Panian
Buy It Now at Chronicle Books, $14.99

This game will be available in September after its successful Kickstarter campaign. It requires you to use your guile as you piece together different animals to create original creatures and battle them against your opponents' mythical pets.

Blacklight Nudie Cards

Designer: Ryan McGinness
Buy It Now at Moxi Boxi, $35

With its fluorescent shapes against a black background, this artsy deck of cards adds a colorful twist to poker night. It also helps that the one and only Ryan McGinness was behind this game.

Cards Against Humanity

Designer: Highland Park High School Alumni
Buy It Now at Cards Against Humanity, $25

This game's simple concept and hilarious content has become a sensation. Definitely NSFW, it allows you and your friends to stretch your offensive humor muscles.

London IQ