The back office
About Donut Deck
A printed deck that turned into a browser game that plays by exactly the same rules.
What it is
Donut Deck is an abstract strategy card game about enclosing space. You place a square card, choose which way round it goes, match donuts across the edges it touches, and try to seal a region of one flavour off completely before somebody else does. That is the entire rulebook, and it takes about two minutes to teach.
The reason it is worth a second game is that sealing a region is almost never the best move available. Every card you put down closes something and opens something else, and the whole game is the argument between those two facts.
Where it came from
It started on paper: 60 square cards, split into two 30-card decks in different colours so the table could always tell who played what. The donuts were a joke that stopped being one — five flavours turned out to be exactly enough for the board to feel crowded without becoming unreadable, and a wild that locks to whatever it lands beside solved a problem no amount of extra flavours could.
The browser version came later, and it is not an adaptation. It runs the same rules from the same numbers: the score tiers, the tray size, the minimum box size and the three placement rules all live in one file that both the game and this website read. If a rule changes, the shop window changes with it, because there is nowhere for a stale copy to hide.
What it is for
Two people and a flat surface, mostly. It fits in the gap where a card game is too slight and a proper board game is too much setup: fifteen minutes, no reading during play, no player elimination, and a decision on every single turn.
The browser version is free and will stay free — every mode, every variant, every AI level, no account and no paid tier. It is not a demo of the box. It is the same game, and if you never buy anything that is a completely fine outcome.
Who makes it
Donut Deck is designed and built by Matt Parker. It is an independent project: no publisher, no studio, and no roadmap beyond making the game better and getting the physical edition printed.
Rules questions, bug reports and stockist enquiries all go to the same place — the contact page. Writing about it? There is a press kit with the facts and the art.
Next: the physical edition, press kit, or get in touch.