Press kit

Everything you need to write about American Collapse: the facts, ready-to-use descriptions, downloadable images, and credits. The quickest way to understand the game is to play a round in your browser.

Fact sheet

Title: American Collapse
Designer: Ryan Byrd (independent)
Genre: Survival strategy game, as a board game in development and a free browser adaptation
Play online: Free at americancollapsegame.com. Solo against an automated rival, Pass & Play for 2 to 6 on one device, and online play with private links (coming soon). No account or download.
Boxed edition: Founder's Edition prototype, in playtesting. No price or release date yet.
Players (box): 2 to 6, plus a solo mode (design target)
Play time (box): About 2 to 3 hours (design target, not yet timed at outside tables)
Ages: 14 and up (design target)
Content: 100 crisis scenarios in four tiers. 75 are grounded in real preparedness; the 25 Extreme cards are deliberate speculative fiction.
Art: Illustrations created with AI image tools under the art direction of Ryan Byrd. Art for the boxed edition is not final.
Website: americancollapsegame.com
Contact: hello@americancollapsegame.com

Descriptions

Use these as written, or edit them freely.

One line

A survival strategy game about getting one family through three years of a collapsing United States. Free to play in your browser; the boxed edition is in playtesting.

Short (about 50 words)

American Collapse asks one question every round: a crisis hits, so what does your family do? Players manage water, food, fuel, and medicine across a country split into six regions, choosing to face each crisis, absorb the fallout, or make a sacrifice. The solo game is free in any browser. A boxed edition is in playtesting.

Long (about 150 words)

American Collapse is a survival strategy game by independent designer Ryan Byrd. The United States has come apart into six regions, and no region has everything it needs. Each round deals a crisis, from a boil-water advisory to a grid failure that spreads by the hour, and each family decides how to answer it: face it and pay the cost, ignore it and take the fallout, or sacrifice something they cannot get back. Over twelve rounds and three in-game years, the nation's stability slides toward collapse, and players chase one of five ways to win: survival, restoration, dominance, escape, or a community that spans the map. Seventy-five of the hundred crises are grounded in real preparedness; the last twenty-five go deliberately off the map. A free browser version is playable now, solo or pass-and-play. The boxed edition, for 2 to 6 players plus solo, is a Founder's Edition prototype in playtesting.

What sets it apart

Grounded crises: Most scenarios start from real advisories and real failure modes: water, power, supply lines, medicine. The tiers escalate from a bad week to the truly unthinkable.
Named families: In the boxed game every family member is a named card with a trait, so a loss is a person, not a counter.
A timed, shared decision: At the table, each crisis starts a three-minute timer, and every player reveals a response at the same moment.
Play first, buy later: The browser version is free and playable today, so anyone can try the decisions before a box exists.

Images

Free to use in coverage of the game. All art is prototype art, created with AI image tools under the art direction of Ryan Byrd; please say so if you describe the artwork.

Cards

Print renders trimmed to the card edge, 746 × 1043 JPG, about 0.1 MB each.

Credits

Game design, rules, and writing: Ryan Byrd
Illustrations: Created with AI image tools under the art direction of Ryan Byrd
Typefaces: Anton by Vernon Adams and Archivo by Omnibus-Type, both under the SIL Open Font License
Interface icons: Phosphor Icons (MIT License)

More about the game and how it is made

Contact

For interviews, review or playtest requests, and anything else, email hello@americancollapsegame.com.