The card game where luck never decides for you.
MACLE is a collectible card game that runs in your browser, for free. Four colours, 120 cards, twenty-minute games. You start with a five-chapter campaign that lends you its decks — you need to own no cards at all — and every chapter opens with a short film. You play other people when you feel like it.
Its founding rule: your resources do not depend on your draw, they arrive on their own, one per turn. A defeat is therefore always explained by a decision, never by a bad hand.
The game itself is in French. This page is not: it is here so you can decide whether MACLE is for you before signing up. An English version of the game will come, with no date promised.
Free, nothing to download. Sign-ups open on 27 October 2026.
The resource never betrays you
In most card games your resources are shuffled in with your cards: sometimes you lose without having done anything wrong. MACLE fixes that by removing it — then replaces it with a real decision.
Lands come out on their own
They come from a pile kept apart from your deck, one per turn, automatically. You even know which one is next: it sits face up. So there is no mana screw, and no game decided by a bad draw.
Spending means giving up your answer
An untapped land makes one mana. Everything you spend on your turn is what you will lack when you want to answer on theirs. That is the central decision of the game, and it comes back every single turn.
Nothing is settled until the Stack is empty
A card you play does not act at once: it goes onto the Stack, its target locked and visible. Your opponent can answer, and you can answer their answer. It all resolves backwards, last one first.
Every threat announces itself a turn ahead
A unit arrives in Support: attacks cannot reach it, but it cannot strike yet either. It steps up to the Front on the following turn. You always see what is about to hit you, and you have one turn to answer it.
Your game is an object you can pick back up
MACLE does not save positions: it saves your moves. Replaying the same moves from the same deal gives back exactly the same game — every time. Three things follow, and no other card game offers them.
The turn it turned on
At the end of a solo game, the game shows you the decision that cost you — and offers to replay that turn, same deal, same opponent, move for move. It only points out positions where there is nothing to argue about: on a well-played game, it says nothing.
A position travels as a link
"Here, look — what would you do?" Whoever opens the link picks the game up exactly where you left it and plays on. Chess has done this forever; a card game can too, as long as nothing is hidden by chance.
The daily game
Every day, one shared match: same cards, same draws, same opponent, for everyone. The deck is lent to you — you need to own nothing. One attempt — one you can leave and pick back up. Then you are told where you stand, and showing up pays, even on the days you lose.
Sell what the other doesn't know
When you run out of mana at the wrong moment, you can show your next Seal to your opponent and free up a land. You tell them what they are about to hand back to you, and you get what you need to answer. Once per turn.
You build your own health bar
You have no life total: you have six Seals, and they are six cards you picked out of your own deck and laid down in the order they will break.
When an attack gets through, a Seal breaks — and the card underneath goes to your hand. Taking damage hands you back a card you put there on purpose, for this exact moment. If it is an Ephemeral, you may even play it for free right away.
Losing ground arms you. It is the signature mechanic of the game, and it is what keeps a losing game worth playing to the end.
And your Seals are not only your life: they are the one thing you can sell. Out of mana at the wrong moment, you show your next Seal to your opponent and free up a land — you tell them what they are about to hand back to you, and you get what you need to answer.
Four colours, four dimensions of the rules
None of them is stronger than the others: they play on different axes. That is what stops them from looking alike.
Scarlet
TimeStrike fast, finish first. It wins short games and runs out of breath in long ones.
Azure
InformationKnow, refuse, draw. The colour that counters — and the one that makes you think twice before playing anything.
Gold
MatterEndure, absorb, grow. It is not trying to win early: it is trying to still be there.
Purple
SpaceMove, appear, sacrifice. It changes where things are rather than what they are worth.
Where it stands
MACLE is in alpha. The game is complete and plays from end to end, solo against the AI as well as online against someone. It is made by one person, in Switzerland, in French.
- The game is in French. Only this page is in English, for now.
- No music. The game has sounds, quiet ones, and they never carry information.
- No ladder and no seasons.
- Few players. On day one you will mostly be playing the campaign and the AI — which is what the game is built for, and why the campaign comes first.
- Sign-ups are closed until 27 October.
Part of this game is made with artificial intelligence. Better to write it here than to let you find out.
- The code is written with the help of an AI, directed and reviewed by one person, and held in place by a battery of automated tests.
- The 124 illustrations are generated by a model running on my own machine, from a description I write card by card. None of them enters the game without passing a check: framing, dark values, no signature.
- What is not generated — the rules, the 120 cards, their vocabulary and their balance. Those are designed by hand, then measured over tens of thousands of simulated games.
If that puts you off, it is a legitimate reason to walk away — and better known before you play than after.
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