Nine Knives Card Game

The Original Cut contains 91 unique cards built to cause chaos:
45 Action Cards to twist the game.
37 Play Nows you can’t run from.
8 Knives to cut your way out.
1 Bloody Knife to end someone’s night.

Nine Knives is a survival & elimination card game built on mischief, bad decisions, and perfectly timed betrayal. It’s fast to learn, brutally unpredictable, and designed to reward chaos over caution. Every draw is danger. Every turn shifts the balance. And every friend at the table is a suspect.

This isn’t a game about careful planning or hoarding power—Nine Knives actively punishes it. Action cards let you spy, steal, swap hands, reverse fate, and set traps, but comfort is a liability here. I’ve seen players stacked with options get erased in seconds by someone down to their last, perfectly timed move. Chaos isn’t a side effect. It’s the system working as intended.

Then come the Knives—and everything changes. Only nine exist, and holding one turns you into a walking target. 8 let you rip a card straight out of someone’s hand, while the Bloody Knife ends a player’s game on the spot. They bounce between players, shift the power constantly, and guarantee that no advantage lasts for long. Add in Play Now cards that hijack turns, reverse momentum, and occasionally just eliminate you outright, and suddenly the game feels less like strategy and more like survival.

Nine Knives isn’t about winning clean or playing smart the whole time. It’s about adapting, embracing the mess, and outlasting everyone else—until you’re the last one standing, holding the final card, while the table wonders how it all went so wrong so fast.

Nine Knives didn’t begin in some polished design studio or over a conference table lined with shiny prototypes. It started with a random piece of art my little sister made for fun.

I’ve been a graphic designer for 10+ years, with an unhealthy love for sci-fi, mystery, suspense, and anything beautifully unsettling. Back in college I even designed a creepy marionette-themed 52-card deck (think puppet strings, shadows, and unsettling smiles). It was spooky, strange, and absolutely my aesthetic—eerily close to what Nine Knives would someday become, though I didn’t know it then.

Fast-forward some years later. My family does these casual Sunday meet-ups—movies, food, everyone sharing whatever they’ve been working on. My little sister, an aspiring designer herself, loved to mock up book covers for random phrases that caught her eye. One week she holds up this design:

I remember thinking, “Wow—that looks like the cover of a dangerous story.”
And then… life moved on. I forgot about it.

I woke up like I’d been summoned by fate, stumbled into the bathroom, and suddenly the entire game downloaded into my brain like a secret government file finally declassified. Every rule. Every mechanic. Every juicy betrayal. I sat on cold tile with my phone glowing like sacred scripture, typing for 45 minutes straight and whispering “there’s no way this is real…” When I was done, I flushed (…the toilet. Not the ideas), washed my hands like a civilized human, and went right back to bed as if I hadn’t just conceived a full card game during a midnight bio break.

Morning came. Coffee brewed. Reality returned. I called my little sister—the one who casually designed a piece of art with nine knives spiraling like a ritual sunburst and a lone red blade begging to be chosen. We pulled that design back up, stared at it like detectives reopening a cold case, and decided to build a world around it. Sketches, color palettes, late-night illustration sprints, and dramatic “what if the card could do THIS?” moments later, Nine Knives sharpened itself into existence. Not in a boardroom… but in a bathroom.

One copy of Nine Knives.

Perfect if you:
• Want the full chaos in one box
• Love yelling at friends over bad decisions
• Believe one knife is never just one knife

Two copies. Maximum mischief.

Why Two?
• One to keep
• One to gift (or bribe someone with)
Alliances are stronger when you control the supply

THE ULTIMATE BUNDLE.

Built for the collectors. The bundle includes:
• One copy of Nine Knives 
• KS exclusive Red Knife Plushie
• KS exclusive Poster
• KS exclusive Tote Bag
• All Stretch Goal Add-ons
• Limited Holographic Playable Collectable *Golden Knife Card
   *(ONLY accessible to the first 99 Deepest Cut Pledgers)*

To keep things fair and accurate for everyone, shipping will be calculated and collected after the Kickstarter campaign concludes, closer to our shipping date. This allows us to account for any changes in carrier rates and ensure you receive the best available shipping price based on your location.

Once the campaign successfully concludes, manufacturing will begin within 6–8 weeks. We’ve already secured our manufacturing partner and locked in production, so the process can move forward quickly once funding is complete. From there, the games go straight into production and will ship to backers as soon as they’re ready.

We designed Nine Knives to be compact and lightweight so it can be shipped around the world without the oversized shipping costs often associated with board games.

Shipping will be charged after the campaign through our pledge manager. This allows us to calculate the most accurate shipping costs based on your location and order while keeping rates as fair as possible.

🌍 Shipping Regions
We currently plan to ship Nine Knives to the following regions:

United States, Canada, United Kingdom, EU countries, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain.

If your country isn’t listed above, feel free to send us a message. While we may not be able to accommodate every location during this first run, we’ll do our best to explore additional shipping options where possible.

📬 Customs & Import Taxes
Backers are responsible for any customs duties, VAT, or import taxes required by their country.

📦 Fulfillment
Orders will be shipped from the United States. If the campaign grows large enough, we may utilize regional fulfillment partners to help reduce international shipping costs and improve delivery times for backers outside the U.S.

This project is boosted by BackerCrew

Hi, I’m Morris — a 35-year-old senior graphic designer who’s spent enough time in a cut-throat industry to learn an important survival skill:

You either laugh… or metaphorically stab someone in the back.

Nine Knives started as a fun side project — something completely different from the daily world of client deadlines, revisions, and “can we make the logo bigger?” emails.

I wanted to create something that made people laugh, start a little chaos at the table, and spark those moments where someone looks at their friend and says:
“You did NOT just play that card.”

What started as a creative outlet slowly turned into something bigger. After dozens of playtests, game nights, and way too many late-night design sessions, it became clear this was a game worth bringing to life.

And that’s where Kickstarter comes in.

Kickstarter is the fastest way to turn Nine Knives from a project on my desk into a real game sitting on your table.

If you’ve backed this project — thank you.
You’re helping turn a ridiculous idea into something real.

— Morris
Creator of Nine Knives

Nine Knives would not exist without the people who helped test it, improve it, and patiently listen to me talk about this game far more than any normal human should.

To every friend and family member who play-tested, gave feedback, and tolerated my endless “one more quick idea for a card” messages — thank you. This game exists because of you.

Special shoutouts to the real co-conspirators:

Angie (my sister) – The first person to believe in this ridiculous idea and the long-suffering audience for my endless game design ramblings.

Chey – Promoted the game so aggressively that it triggered spam flags and temporary account bans. That’s dedication you simply can’t teach.

Xan – The co-founder. Helped brainstorm and illustrate some of the funniest cards in the deck, while heroically stopping several truly unhinged ideas from making it into the final game.

Viv – Play-tester, game night host, and strategic mastermind behind multiple hour-long calls plotting how to make the world just a little more dangerous.

And finally…

Thank you to everyone backing Nine Knives.

You’re not just supporting a game —
you’re officially part of the uKNIVErse now. 🌏 🔪