TOKENS is a roguelike deckbuilder from Atelier QDB that swaps cards for double-sided tokens, launching Q3 2026 on Steam. A demo is available now. Announced during the 2026 Pégases ceremony, the game drops players into a fantasy world dressed in the glamour of 1920s private clubs, where gaining entry to the prestigious Token Club means outsmarting its enigmatic leader.
That leader is Mister Mirage, part gentleman and part trickster, who sets the stage for every run and orchestrates the challenges standing between players and membership. He'll hand over the Golden Coin, an artifact capable of reversing the result of a play, but he's just as likely to throw ruthless boss encounters and treacherous Challenge Cards in the way. Players take on the role of an aspirant trying to prove they belong among the Club's exceptional artists and adventurers, building a deck of tokens and demonstrating enough strategic skill to clear Mister Mirage's gauntlet.
The tokens themselves are where the game diverges from the deckbuilder template. Each token is double-sided, carrying a colour (red, blue, white, or black) and displaying either a number or a symbol on each side. Numbers come in denominations of 25, 50, and 100 while symbols include Hand, Heart, and Eye. Players line tokens up on the table to hit a required score, matching numbers, symbols, and colours to trigger Harmonies and rack up massive totals. Every three rounds a boss encounter arrives, testing whether the deck can hold up under pressure and forcing players to rethink their approach.
Two types of artifacts shape how each run plays out. Arcanes are powerful tarot cards that reward high scores under specific conditions, while Effigies are magical miniatures that introduce new effects and bend the game's rules. The combination of these two systems gives each run its strategic identity, letting players chase different synergies depending on what they find. The Token Club itself is home to founding members who offer help along the way: the Dealer stocks Arcanes, Effigies, and rare tokens; the Witch can alter a token's colour, number, or symbol, or make it vanish entirely; the Jeweler marks tokens with precious gems that unlock new effects and special reactions. Each of these allies reshapes what's possible within a run, turning the randomness of the draw into something players can manipulate.
Atelier QDB is a four-person independent studio based in Paris, founded in 2020. The studio is led by Quentin De Beukelaer, a game director and designer with over a decade of experience across AAA and indie development. Before founding the studio he worked at Ubisoft as a game designer on Assassin's Creed III, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, and Assassin's Creed: Unity. His previous games under Atelier QDB, Narcosis and Decarnation, were narrative horror titles. TOKENS represents a deliberate shift toward placing gameplay at the centre of the project. As De Beukelaer put it, using tokens instead of cards became "an ideal starting point to explore the concept of randomness and how players can manipulate it."
Each run through the Token Club offers a fresh configuration of challenges and opportunities, with the roaring twenties atmosphere giving the whole thing a distinct sense of occasion. The fantasy setting leans into the mystique of secret societies and exclusive circles, where every round at the table feels like a performance for an audience that hasn't decided whether to let you in yet. Mister Mirage looms over it all, generous one moment and ruthless the next, shaping the tension between risk and reward that drives each attempt forward.