Maieutic

Philosophers as cards

Maieutic is a PC roguelike deckbuilder in which philosophers are your cards, and their ideas determine how a hand scores. Build hands from 272 real thinkers, each with a school, era, fields, tags, and a distinct passive. Cards from the same school reinforce one another, while intellectual lineages connect thinkers across centuries. Aristotle’s influence runs through Scholasticism, for example, and Empiricism hands off to Pragmatism.

Ideas can also clash. Playing contradicting philosophers collapses your multiplier, so a hand’s score depends on whether its arguments fit together, not on matching arbitrary card colors. Philosophers who knew each other can recognize students or interrupt rivals at the table. The synergy system draws on 97 schools, 41 fields, 31 tags, and 15 eras.