Areteion

Areteion is a card game that plays like a strategy game. You don't just throw units at your opponent's face, you play your cards onto a board, where they farm, hunt, fish, build, explore, and (yes, also) fight. The goal is Arete, and every way of life can earn it.

Twelve gods, twelve ways to play

Every deck belongs to one or two of the 12 Olympians, and every Olympian plays completely differently:

• Demeter builds Farms, optimises the harvest, celebrates the Eleusinian Mysteries.
  
• Artemis sends Huntresses and Hunters across the map chasing hares and boars.
  
• Poseidon builds Harbors and Ships, goes fishing, rules the seas.
  
• Ares plays a bunch of Warriors and attacks the enemy. (Sometimes the classics work.)

And that's 4 of the 12. Combine two gods in one deck and it gets really interesting: there are 600+ cards, with many more to come.

The board fights back

Barbarians raid, pirates prowl the coasts, monsters like the Lernaean Hydra squat on the best land, and encounters like the Sphinx wait for someone brave (or greedy) enough. Terrain matters, position matters, no two maps play the same.

The Olympians are watching

Favor is a resource like any other. Earn it, and the gods bless your plans. Neglect it, and their curses will derail them. Some strategies are built entirely around appeasing Olympus; others learn to adapt when the gods turn against them. Nobody gets to ignore them. This is Greek mythology, and hubris has consequences.

Game Modes

• Solo Just you and the gods. Build decks from your collection, push your Arete highscores up the leaderboards, and explore maps full of monsters, barbarians, and encounters.
  
• Hero's Journey A roguelike mode: draft a deck, then reshape it run by run against escalating challenges on ever-different maps.
  
• Versus 1v1 on a competitive map layout. Face AI opponents that lean into their god's strategy, or challenge a friend online.

You start with a modest collection and unlock more of the 600+ cards by playing. Every win adds cards, and every new god opens up archetypes and combinations to build around.

Why I made this

Greek mythology is so rich and vast, and despite countless titles it still isn't explored enough. I thought it deserved a CCG that could eventually have a card for every single character. There are so many good stories! That was my starting point, years ago.

But the typical "I have my side, you have your side, everything fights and dies" formula of card games bored me. 4X and RTS games offer much more strategic depth and long-term planning. So Areteion became an attempt to capture that depth with familiar CCG mechanics on a board. And because Greek life was never just war (farming, hunting, seafaring, love, law, aesthetics), every one of those became a path to victory.

Development continues!