Data Chain 2025

Data Chain is an abstract strategic card game with a light cyberpunk theme for 2-4 players about knowing when to save and when to spend your resources. Players take turns collecting chips to purchase cards that are each worth a point from the central Data Row. When you purchase cards, you also receive a reward which increases with each subsequent card you purchase, thus creating a powerful Data Chain! The player with the most points at the end of the game wins! It’ll take both your wits and some luck to master the Data Chain!

The player who most recently used a spreadsheet or had the lowest score in a previous game of Data Chain becomes the first player. Each turn you can either take chips or purchase cards from a shared central Data Row.

A "Data Chain" occurs when a player purchases multiple cards in a single turn. Chain your purchases together and potentially buy all 4 cards in the Data Row! Each card has a cost located on the bottom half of the card which will show how many chips of each color it takes to purchase the card. Each card also shows a reward on the top half of the card which is taken when the card is purchased. If this is your first purchase of the turn, take 1 chip of that color from the bank. If this is the second card you’ve purchased this turn, take 2 chips of that color, etc. Since the reward on each card increases for each link in your Data Chain and you can also spend the reward on purchased cards, planning ahead and strategically chaining your purchases together is the key to success!

The game ends when the last card in the deck is flipped into the data row. After this happens, play continues until all players have taken an equal number of turns. After the game has ended, all players count all of their cards purchased throughout the game (both face up and face down) and whoever has the most cards is the winner!

—description from the designer