Find your aha.
There's no single right way in. Pick the door that matches how the game already lives in your head — each one ends at the exact moment Playproof clicks.
Place it once. The data fills the rest.
Open the Layout Designer on a blank canvas.
Add elements — a title, an art frame, a cost badge, a rules box. Stack and tidy them in the Layers panel.
In X-Ray, point each element at a field — this text shows {name}, this slot shows {art}.
Flip to Style for real fonts and colors, then Preview for the clean, print-ready card.
Bind one text box to the Name field — and every card in the deck has its own name. You didn't place 120 text boxes. You placed one, and the data did the rest.
Define a card once. Get a whole deck.
Open Card Data and start a template — say, Creature.
Add fields, each with a type: name (text), cost (number), rules (area text), faction (category), art (image), icon.
Switch to the cards table and add a few rows — or paste a CSV you've been balancing in a spreadsheet.
Hit ⌘S. The template's shared, so any game can reuse it.
Paste 120 rows and you've got 120 cards — each already knowing its shape. Tweak the template later and every card updates with it.
One project. Always a version that worked.
Create a game and write the overview and rules while they're fresh.
Give it a Card Data Template (its fields) and a layout (its look).
List components, build the deck, and log what happens in Playtests.
Snapshot the game before a session.
Snapshot, then wreck the balance on purpose. If the new idea flops, roll back to the version that worked — your good build is never more than a click away.
A native app is on the way.
A native Mac & iPad version of Playproof is coming — same three doors in, same aha. Here's the story behind it.