PLAI 2025

After countless sprints, late-night deploys, and one too many retros, tech workers finally have a way to process their burnout: by weaponizing it.

In PLAI, each player becomes the founder of a tech startup trying to outlast their rivals in a brutal landscape of buzzwords, funding rounds, market events, and hostile takeovers. Players must fund their operations, steal other companies' assets, and defend their shaky roadmap with every card in the deck. If your startup collapses, don’t worry—you’ll join the Open Source Project, where defeated founders can still band together to take down the last startup standing.

Built on a 106 card deck, PLAI features fast-paced rounds for 2 to 5 players. Each turn, players either draw Funding cards to grow their resources, play a card or launch a hostile takeover in that mirrors the absurdity of real-world tech culture.

Playable in under 30 minutes, PLAI is a game for developers, founders, and product teams who’ve lived through sprint hell, priority changes, and side project drama—and who are finally ready to laugh about it.

—description from the designer