BoosterWare
This DEMO covers only the first 2 hours of a much bigger game.
The full version is coming in 2027, so wishlist it on Steam to get notified! Drop your feedback and ideas in the comments, and I'll try to incorporate them.
One tip before you start playing: the first ten minutes look like a normal card game. It doesn’t stay that way for long.
A recurring issue: Once you unlock windowed mode, you can make the title bar visible and toggle between maximized and windowed simply by moving the mouse to the top edge of the screen, or by pressing Tab.
BoosterWare is a deckbuilding autobattler where you cheat at your favorite card game. Crack packs, build decks, and install shady tools to automate the grind. Just when it starts to feel familiar, something new shows up. All on an early-2000s desktop that feels a little too real.
Crack packs. Build decks. Let them fight.
You’re hooked on Booster Battles, the online card game everyone’s playing in the early 2000s. Every pack is five cards and a tiny gamble. Every new card is a combo you haven’t tried yet. Every win buys more packs, and there’s a ladder to climb from Tin all the way to Legend.
There’s just one problem: grinding ranked by hand takes forever. Luckily, your buddy on messenger knows a guy.
It starts with an auto-clicker.
Suddenly, the battles play themselves. Sell spare cards on the marketplace, spend the cash on sketchier software, and watch your collection snowball while the bots grind in the background. You handle only the fun part: crack packs, tweak decks, and collect rewards.
Every tool is a program you install, and your desktop fills up as you go. Eventually you won’t just be playing the game. You’ll be rewriting it.
The internet, the way you remember it.
Forum regulars argue about which decks work best, and post deck codes you can import to your deck builder. Then the meta shifts, and card prices follow. Buy before the hype, and sell at the peak.
The game gets patched while you play, new features unlock, and the forums lose their minds over every update.
There’s always one more patch, one more unlock, one more app, and each one lands right when you need it. And there’s always that one player ranked just above you.
Features
- 200+ cards across 13 factions, each built around its own signature mechanic
- Three-lane autobattles: you build the deck, the cards fight on their own, and keywords stack and chain in ways you didn’t plan
- Merge duplicates into upgrades, so no pull is wasted
- 30 heroes whose abilities change how you build
- 5 game modes, most of which arrive as live patches while you play
- Singleplayer, with a fictional community of rivals, forum regulars, and drama around you.
- Optional async multiplayer modes with multiple leaderboards.
Use the full-screen toggle in the bottom-right corner for the best experience.
Development log
Comments
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Played till I got 3 decks of straight epic II. I honestly love the concept. If you need steam beta tester PLEASE let me know. Few changes is it seems like epic packs can never get rares. it would be nice if sometimes you can still get a extra rare instead of another common. Rare packs do seem like you can get lucky and get an epic instead but epics did not pull legendries (I assume that was on purpose). Did get 2 from chest rewards and ooo are they juice. a later autoclicker to claim card rewards after battle would be nice. I would love if in the final game there was a "free play" mode where you could play on older patches. maybe I just want to go back to start and wreck with all my legendries. I can see later patches add faction character it seems which sounds cool. I do like the buying idea and assume it would matter if you had a II version or had pulled a card before you can buy it. would be cool if later III versions of cards or what not also changed or upgrade the abilities. Maybe a button on each game where you can mute it. also if you do not click on an item (say the music one) then chat continue you lose it. I now only have 1 song in my music but I assume the download would have added much more and I cannot go back and get it.
I'm glad to hear you enjoyed the demo!
If you are interested in playtesting, please join my Discord. I aim to start testing in December at the earliest, and would love to have everyone in the same place to make it easier to manage: https://discord.gg/ntG95jFV79
Thank you very much for the feedback, and hoping to see you on Discord!
I'm wondering
since you can sell cards... why not buy them? I hope that an actual card marketplace is going to be a feature in the full release.
It will unlock later, yes. Buying right away would trivialize the economy. :)
I really like the "rug pull", I didn't see it coming!
I'm happy that you liked it! The full game will have a lot more of these, so make sure you wishlist it! ;)
Actually really enjoyed it, I don't think it deserves all the downvotes it got!
There is a bit of a lack of strategy for a card game though, the best strategy just seemed to be put the biggest cards in your deck. I can see the potentially fixed by having the multiple games running though, but I still think it will be the same.
I had 2 games running at the same time, one with my biggest beast and undead cards, and the other with my biggest elemental and construct cards, and I was winning every game until I got to copper rank, at which point I stopped played because I had done everything that I cared to grind out.
Looking forward to the full release though!
I'm glad to hear you liked the demo! There is a lot more in the full version, and the demo really is just a teaser. I wanted to keep it simple and not introduce advanced deck-building challenges early on, but there will be many for those who are into it! ;)
maybe add a collection bonus for keeping X copies of each card so your first instinct isn't to immediately trash four fifths of every pack.
Duplicates have several uses, and trashing them is one. ;)
hi
how are you?
The first ten minutes pretending to be a straight card game, then the messenger buddy sliding you an auto-clicker, is a nasty little trick in the best way. Glad the latest demo added mute-when-unfocused for true idle and made Tab a reliable way back from maximized, especially when the browser overlay eats the top edge. After the bots start grinding Tin toward Legend, is tweaking the deck still the part you protect, or do you end up watching the marketplace more?
Is this AI?
could use bonus gold for over kills, hiting for 14 when they have 1 hp and just one little dink happens can be unsatisfying.
Thanks for the feedback, I'll add that to the full game!
Nice game, it would be nice to see the pack chances maybe trough an upgrade or update or so.
Can't wait for the full game.
I'm glad to hear you liked it! :)
Packs have one guaranteed card of their own rarity (except the Legendary pack, which is 1 Epic + 1 Legendary guaranteed). This is displayed in their tooltips, both in the Pack Trainer and the ingame shop. + a small but undisclosed chance of being upgraded to the next rarity.
I hope this helps!
Thx
This is super fun and I can't wait for a full game! If there is 1 problem I have is that the grinding takes quite a long time, especially since there's not really any way to increase the amount of coins you can get beside getting better cards, and getting those better cards need a lot of coins.
granted in the full game you can unlock the legendary pack and more ram to have more window open, so the grind would probably be faster, but is it possible to have something that help grinding for cards easier? maybe a shop that cycles through random cards and lets you buy cards? maybe it even notify you if a wishlisted card is being sold.
This way, you have a way to sink the money you earned from selling your own cards & finishing challenges (since at the moment you have nothing to spend your money on once you buy everything, though then again this is a demo and, from the list of features you plan to add, there seem to be a lot planned out already, so as far as I know my suggestion might already be on that list.)
also, could you add an explanation somewhere that tells you on how to zoom out from the game? I thought I was stuck until I press tab and it zoom me back out to desktop (esc was my 1st guess but it just open the in-game option settings instead)
Thank you very much for the feedback. I'm happy to hear you liked the demo!
You can also toggle windowed mode by moving the mouse at the upper edge of the screen. The browser overlay would also show up (a downside of running in a browser), but it displays the title bar, and you can toggle between the states. I'll add this to the top of the page.
As for your other suggestion, there are several new apps and features unlocking right after the demo ends, that will address all your concerns. The content here barely scratches the surface of what's already there in the full version.
You've made a great game that's got me playing way past the end of the demo because its just that *fun*.
Which means I, being a wannabe game developer, am now going to share my opinions unprompted. Feel free to ignore everything I say, its probably for the best, but maybe one or two suggestions are actually decent
Okay so first off, major continuity issue / mechanic suggestion! Buying cards. We've got the ability to sell cards, that's good, however its described as hacking to transfer card ownership. Which, after opening countless packs, got me wondering: Why can't we buy cards? Surely there'd be no reason why we couldn't find someone else selling cards and purchase them, to add those cards to our account? I understand that balancing-wise it'd be a bit of an issue, but maybe the person running the card-selling service is incredibly greedy and it costs 10x the sell price of a card to buy it.
Second, username change! This one's just a personal thing, but making players pick their own username instead of assigning them one of the random ones might be fun
The control bar; It doesn't stick around. Even moving my mouse to the top of the screen doesn't bring it back, so if I maximize a battles window I can't un-fullscreen it to check my other stuff without first fully exiting the game. Feels a bit weird, honestly.
actually that's about it. You made a really solid game! Already wishlisted it on steam, looking forward to it!
I'm glad to hear you liked it, and thank you very much for the detailed feedback!
Thanks again for the kind words; feel free to comment or ask if you have anything else!