Card-a-mon or Dextrous?
Checked against dextrous.com.au and its documentation on 2026-10-20.
Dextrous, made by two game designers in Australia, is a prototyping tool for board and card games that runs in the browser. So is Card-a-mon, and the two work much alike: you lay a card out by dragging boxes on it, fill the cards from a spreadsheet or a Google Sheet, print them at home and play them in Tabletop Simulator. The differences are in what comes after: the files a printer wants, the parts that are not cards, and help from AI.
This page is for deciding which one fits you, and it says where Dextrous is the better choice.
The short answer
Choose Dextrous if
- you are going to a manufacturer and need a CMYK or PDF/X file, with fonts embedded;
- you want a hex or square grid board, or a rulebook, made in the same tool;
- you style cards like a web page: text styles, shadows, blend modes, a zone shown on some cards only;
- you playtest on Tabletopia, PlayingCards.io or Dustin's Designer Den as well as Tabletop Simulator;
- you teach a class and want student accounts the teacher can see.
Choose Card-a-mon if
- you want more than two projects free, in the cloud, or on your own computer with no account at all;
- you use Firefox or Safari, or a tablet, rather than Chrome;
- you are ordering from The Game Crafter, MakePlayingCards or Ludotipia and want the files right the first time;
- you want earlier versions of your cards kept, to compare and restore;
- you want help from AI with the cards' words, the rules or a playtest.
Side by side
| Dextrous | Card-a-mon | |
|---|---|---|
| How you design | Drag and drop zones on a layout, styled much like a web page: text styles, shadows, filters, blend modes. Templates to start from. | Drag, resize and rotate text and image boxes on the card, or type positions in millimetres. They snap to each other. Templates to start from. |
| Runs on | The browser; its help asks for Chrome, and says Edge may work. Online only. | Any modern browser, online. A game is kept in your account, or on this computer with no account, in the browser or in a folder you pick in Chrome and Edge. A project's zip prints without the site. |
| Price | Free plan: 2 projects, 10 layouts, 100 MB. US$6 a month (US$48 a year) for 10 projects and 1 GB; US$12 (US$96 a year) for unlimited projects, 10 GB and the new PDF export; US$24 (US$192 a year) for 100 GB and its Pro layouts. | Free, with no account and no limit, for games on this computer. In the cloud, a free plan with as many projects as you like, and 100 MB; paid plans for more room, history and hosted decks. AI is paid for in credits. |
| Card data | A table of cards in the app, a CSV, or a linked Google Sheet, refreshed with a button. Variables, which can come from a CSV too. Images are uploaded, not linked from the sheet. | CSV out and in, a row per card and a column per box, or a linked Google Sheet the cards follow. A count for each card. |
| Rules in the layout | Some: a zone can hide itself when empty, or be shown or hidden on chosen cards from a style column. | Not as rules, but a box with no text or no picture on a card is not drawn there, so an empty column in the sheet hides it. A bigger difference in look is a different layout. |
| Artwork | Your own uploads, SVGs that stretch, and stock images for playtesting. | Your own uploads; thousands of free icons from game-icons.net, Twemoji and Kenney, credited for you, on a square, round or hexagonal background if you like; and a drawing tool for frames, bars and badges, in gradients with outlines, bevels, shadows and textures, saved as SVG. |
| Text | Custom text styles, icons inline, text that shrinks to fit. Emoji in the new PDF export only from an emoji font. | About 140 fonts chosen for games, or your own; bold, italic, colour, icons and emoji inline; text that shrinks to fit. |
| Sizes and parts | Poker, bridge, tarot, domino and other card sizes, hex tiles and round tokens. A board maker for hex and square grids, and a basic rulebook maker. | Each layout can have its own size and shape: cards, round and hex tokens, boards, mats and booklets in one project, at the shops' sizes. No grid maker, and no rulebook with text that runs across pages yet. |
| Print at home | A print-and-play layout on Letter, A4 or A3, with bleed, cut marks and the backs, saved as a PDF through Chrome's print dialog. | A print-and-play PDF at any page size, made in the editor, with cut marks or the cards cut to shape, each page of fronts followed by its backs. |
| Printers' files | A new PDF export, being tested on the US$12 plan and up: CMYK, embedded fonts, a colour profile, PDF/X, one card a page, and a spot colour dieline for Launch Tabletop. It is made on Dextrous's server, in at most 15 minutes, so a big deck of rich cards may need several. | Images set up for The Game Crafter, MakePlayingCards or Ludotipia: their bleed, resolution and format, the backs and the counts as each shop wants them, a check before export, and what the cards cost at each. In RGB; the shops convert to CMYK. |
| The Game Crafter | Listed among the printers to try; the files are uploaded by hand. | Makes the whole game in your TGC account: decks, chits and tiles, boards, mats, booklets, books, score pads and rule documents, each with its count. |
| Play online | A Tabletop Simulator deck with the images hosted by Dextrous, and a button that updates your saved games; boards to Tabletop Simulator too. Screentop.gg, Dustin's Designer Den, PlayingCards.io and Tabletopia. | Sheets and a saved object for Tabletop Simulator, sheets for Screentop.gg, Tabletop Playground and other tabletops, and decks hosted to play in the browser. |
| Working together | Not yet: its help suggests a shared Google Sheet with one person doing the layouts. Teacher accounts with seats for students. | A project can be shared by link, to look at or to copy; not edited by two people at once. |
| Your history | Undo; its help says nothing of earlier versions. | In the cloud, earlier versions are kept, can be compared card by card, and restored. |
| Testing the game | Print it, or play it on an online tabletop. | Bots play the whole game thousands of times, from a game engine Claude writes from your rules (paid in AI credits). |
| AI | None. | A chat with Claude beside the cards, which reads and changes them; playtests by bots. |
Where Dextrous is the better tool
Files for a manufacturer. Dextrous's new PDF export does what a factory asks for: CMYK, PDF/X, fonts embedded, a colour profile, a dieline in a spot colour. Card-a-mon makes RGB images and leaves the conversion to the shop, which is fine for print on demand but not for a printer that wants a press-ready file. The export is still being tested, and on Dextrous's US$12 plan and up.
Boards and rulebooks. Dextrous has a board maker for hex and square grids, at the sizes of well known games, that exports to Tabletop Simulator, and a basic rulebook maker with columns and pictures. In Card-a-mon a board is a layout you design like a card, and rules are reference cards or booklet pages laid out one at a time.
Styling. A Dextrous zone takes the styles of a web page: shadows, strokes, filters, blend modes, text styles kept in one place and used everywhere, and a zone shown on some cards and not others from a style column. Card-a-mon's boxes have fewer settings: a box is left off a card when the card gives it no text or picture, but a card that looks different otherwise is a layout of its own. Card-a-mon's shadows, bevels and gradients are in its drawing tool, for the pictures you draw, not on every box.
More online tabletops. Dextrous exports to Tabletopia, PlayingCards.io and Dustin's Designer Den besides Tabletop Simulator and Screentop.gg, and keeps your Tabletop Simulator saves up to date with a button.
Storage in the cloud, and classes. Dextrous's paid plans give more room in the cloud for the money: 10 GB at US$12 a month, 100 GB at US$24. And it has teacher accounts with student seats, for a game design course.
Where Card-a-mon is the better tool
The free plan. Dextrous's free plan has two projects and ten layouts. Card-a-mon's has as many projects as you like; what it limits is storage in the cloud.
Your files, on your computer. Dextrous keeps every project on its server, behind an account. Card-a-mon can keep a game on this computer instead, with no account and no limit: in the browser, or in Chrome and Edge in a folder you pick, as files you can see and back up. It is never sent to the server. Copy it to the cloud when you want sharing, history or AI.
Any browser. Dextrous asks for Chrome, and its print-and-play PDF is saved through Chrome's print dialog, with the margins and background graphics set by hand. Card-a-mon runs in any modern browser, on a tablet too, and makes the PDF itself.
Ordering from a shop. Card-a-mon knows the sizes, bleed and file layout The Game Crafter, MakePlayingCards and Ludotipia want, checks the cards before export — text near the cut, pictures too small to print sharp — and says what the cards cost at each. With The Game Crafter it makes the game in your account, every part of it. TGC still asks you to proof each image there before you order.
Your history. Card-a-mon keeps earlier versions of a project, shows which cards changed, and can put back one card or the whole set.
AI, if you want it. Ask Claude, in the chat beside the cards, to change them, check them or price them, and have bots play the game a few thousand times to see whether it can be won, how long it takes and whether a card decides it. Dextrous has no AI. See Claude at work. None of it is needed to use the editor.
Moving from Dextrous
Your spreadsheet comes with you. Lay out one card in Card-a-mon, name its boxes after your columns (title, cost, text…), and import the sheet as CSV, or link the same Google Sheet. Each row becomes a card. Upload the images the sheet names, and they fill in. The layout has to be built again by hand: Dextrous's project files are not read. See Cards in a spreadsheet.
Free, in your browser. Sign in with just your email.
Sources
Dextrous: its home page, pricing, and its documentation on exporting, the PDF export, its FAQ and its road map. The Game Crafter: proofing images. If something here is out of date, tell us.