Card Hunter

Card Hunter is presented to the player as a gaming session with gamemaster Gary who is guiding the player through a tabletop role-playing game, using dungeon modules similar to those of Dungeons & Dragons which consist of 1 or more encounters. Part of this fiction is Gary himself is still learning the ropes; at the start of the player's career, Gary is using his older brother Melvin's more powerful characters to demonstrate the core mechanics of the game, but later his brother takes these away, forcing Gary and the player to start anew.

The player generates a party of up to three characters; more characters can be recruited and swapped in and out between modules. Characters are selected by class, which determine equipment type they can use, and race, which grant special bonuses during combat. Each character has a deck of 36 cards which are determined by class, race, and their current equipment. Initially, the amount of equipment each character carries is limited, but as the characters gain experience points, they gain more equipment slots, expanding the abilities through new cards that enter their deck, allowing players to customize their characters.

Blue Manchu Games was formed by Chey after he left Irrational Games, which had been sold to 2K Games and re-branded as 2K Australia. Chey formed Blue Manchu as a self-funded studio with the intention of creating games that interested him, and had no provable mass appeal so it would be difficult to attract investors. Work began in August 2010, and the game was developed in secret until being announced in July 2011.

The team working on Card Hunter began as a distributed organisation with Chey as the only full-time employee.

Jerry Holkins (Tycho) of Penny Arcade selected Card Hunter as his favourite game of PAX 2012.