Climb the ladder.
Sabotage your friends.
Keep your sanity.
A 20-minute card game for 3–6 people who've cried in a meeting. It's not therapy. It's pettier.
There's a goal, a hand, and a coworker to throw under the bus.
“Steal Credit”
One of 166 cards. “Just to build on what they said —” and now it’s yours.
Sound familiar?
You know these people.
You've survived these Mondays.
166 cards based on the people, moments, and indignities of modern office life. Beautifully painted. Specifically cruel.
The one who answers every Slack in 4 hours and somehow gets promoted.
Owns 11 projects, finishes zero, and CC's the CEO when their plant dies.
The meeting that could've been an email but is now your Thursday.
"Just to build on what they said —" and now it's their idea.
How it plays
Learn in 3 minutes.
Ruin friendships for 20.
It's Monday. Something is on fire. You did not start the fire — but you do have a coworker, and a hand of cards. The rest writes itself.
Something terrible happens.
You draw a card. The WiFi is down. There's a surprise all-hands. Karen brought her dog again. Deal with it.
Pin it on someone else.
Play a card. Forward the email. Volunteer them for the working group. “Just looping you in” is a weapon now.
Get promoted anyway.
They get the blame. You get a rung up the corporate ladder. First one to CEO wins. Eye contact at the standup is optional.
Three card types, one bad week
Color-coded misery,
sorted for your convenience.
Every card is one of three. Learn them before your coffee cools.
- Character
Picked at setup, played to the end. Your Character decides how you climb — and what trips you up.
- Crisis
Something terrible happens. WiFi outage, surprise reorg, Karen brought her dog. Someone has to take it on the chin.
- Action
How you survive a Crisis. Sabotage, sick leave, personal emergency — anything that keeps the blame off your back.
From the test table
20 playtesters.
3 of them are still
speaking to us.
Roughly 60 games. Friends, coworkers, one slightly hostile book club. Below: things they actually said while we wrote them down. Real names and proper video reviews land on the Kickstarter page.
Laughed harder than at any party game we own. Then somebody actually started trying to win. We laughed even harder.
Sat down as friends. Stood up as rivals. There's a group chat now that didn't exist before, and somehow we're closer.
Said one quick round. Played five. We've now agreed to stop saying 'one quick round.'
— Quotes paraphrased from playtest notes. Video reviews and real names coming on Kickstarter day.
Roughly in the box
Built. Played.
Screamed at repeatedly.
Cards are printed. Rules are locked. Manufacturer is quoted. Final unit count, edition, and stretch goals land on Kickstarter day — but here's what we already have on the table.
- 166 illustrated cards across three types. Painted by humans, not a model.
- The corporate ladder. Eight rungs, intern to CEO. One winner. Many grudges.
- Rules, illustrated. Readable in the time it takes to brew a coffee.
Who made this
One person. One iPad.
Fifteen years of grudges.
Hi — I'm Milan, from Bonn, Germany. Fifteen years in tech (Head of Engineering, CTO, the usual collection of titles) writing down the absurd meeting moments piling up around me. My wife — a customer success team lead with her own deep archive of corporate insanity — has been behind this from the very first scribble, and soon enough she was adding her own stories to the pile. Once we had too many for a notebook, I started drawing them.
Now my wife and I play the result on weekends and laugh harder than we probably should. Every card is designed and illustrated by me — iPad and Photoshop, with a Higgsfield assist and a lot of manual cleanup so all 166 demons share a face, a vibe, and one tiny visual joke per card. Good luck spotting them all.
First in line
Get the launch link
24 hours early.
Two emails total. One when the Kickstarter goes live. One when it ships. We won't sit in your inbox. We have other people to annoy.
No spam. No upsells. Unsubscribe in one click. We will probably never even email you a third time.
Reasonable questions
Yes. It's safe to play with your boss.
Probably.
How is this different from Cards Against Humanity or Exploding Kittens?
CAH and EK are reaction games — you read a card, you laugh. Deadline Demons is a strategy game with jokes: you're trying to win, and the cards just happen to be funny. The laughs come from who you stab on the way up the ladder.
How long does a game actually take?
20–30 minutes once you know the deck. Faster at 3 players. Longer when everyone keeps forwarding the email to each other, which they will.
Is this safe to play with my boss?
Yes. It satirises corporate dysfunction — meetings, KPIs, performance reviews — without swearing or politics. We've already played it with two HR teams. They laughed. We have witnesses.
When does the Kickstarter launch and what does the waitlist get me?
Fall 2026. Waitlist subscribers get the link 24 hours before it goes public — which is when the cheapest tier (capped at the first 250 backers) tends to vanish. One email at launch, one when we ship. No filler in between.
Be first in line when the doors open.
Kickstarter launches Fall 2026. Waitlist subscribers get the link 24 hours before everyone else — in time to grab one of the first 250 early-bird slots before they go public.
Join the waitlist →