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Pre-orders available now! First 100 sold are signed by the creator.
Words are hard. Acrosticism isn't.
What Is Acrosticism?
Acrosticism: The Backronym Party Game is simple and fun. Take a Word Card from your hand and use each letter to build a phrase that fits the Judge's theme. That's a backronym. Once you play it, it's gone for good. So choose wisely.
The Judge awards the Theme Card to their favorite backronym. Win the most Theme Cards, win the game. What about ties, you ask? They're celebrated.
Everyone has a turn as Judge. That's a round. You can play up to three rounds before you reset.
Three to seven players, at least 15 minutes, but if you can read, you can play.
In the box, you'll find everything you need to play:
126 Word Cards
53 Theme Cards
1 Sand timer
1 Rule book
And the best part is you can get started in under a minute.
A Little Bit Of History
A Little Bit Of History
On October 23, 2024, I jotted down a game idea in Google Keep and completely forgot about it. About a year later, on an idle afternoon in October 2025, I found it again. On a whim, I wrote it out on index cards and brought it to my advisory classes. I taught SEL during Advisory and figured the game would benefit the kids in a way that would empower them to use their words before their actions. I'm a middle school counselor, and I figured that if it could hold the attention of a room full of middle schoolers, I might be onto something.
It held their attention. Then they told me to make it real.
So I did.
From Index Cards to Fully Realized Game
From Index Cards to Fully Realized Game
I used AI to create the first logo for the game, and it looked a bit fake and manufactured. But I decided to run with it anyway. Then I found a video by a content creator named Adam in Wales, used his promo code for Launch Tabletop, and ordered my first real print run. When the cards finally arrived, I played with my students, my own kids, and the adults around all of them. I didn't expect much, but everyone loved it. Genuinely. Not politely. Not trying to spare my feelings. They legitimately loved it.
From there I iterated. The Alpha was index cards. The Beta was a 60 card set with a rule sheet, the AI art, and no box. The print was so tiny. The Gamma added a proper box, my wife's illustrations, tuckboxes, and a full proper rulebook. At this point it was February of 2026. I needed feedback and looked to my cohort of graduate students for clinical mental health counseling. Their feedback drove the Delta into existence. The Delta was the penultimate result of all that feedback, refined everything and added a sand timer, leading to the version you are looking at right now, one final, polished product.
Middle schoolers playtested it. Elementary schoolers playtested it. Adults playtested it. The Delta version is the culmination of months of honest feedback from the most unfiltered focus groups I could find.
Chaotic Remixes
Chaotic Remixes
Once you have played a few rounds of Acrosticism, there are strange rules ahead. That is what the Chaotic Remixes deck is for. Twenty four cards that bend or sometimes outright break the rules of the core game. It is the one true expansion, designed to be added whenever your group is ready for more chaos.
What's Coming Next
What's Coming Next
Acrosticism is not just one game. It is a universe.
After the core game ships, the next chapter is already in development. Profession specific standalone editions, each one its own complete build of the game with words and themes pulled from a specific world. Legalese is the furthest along. Medical, C Suite, and others are on the horizon.
Each edition will have its own blind bag sets. Each one will have its own campaign. And each one will be built the same way this one was, by actually playing it with real people until it is right.
Blind Bag Promo Packs
Blind Bag Promo Packs
Three unique sets of 15 double sided cards, each one a word on the front and a theme on the back with a quick start card included. You will not know which set you are getting until you open it. Collect all three. Trade with friends. You have been warned.
About the Creator
About the Creator
Marc Shaw is a middle school counselor and lifelong lover of words.
Acrosticism began as a simple Google Keep note on October 23, 2024. It sat quietly for about a year until an idle afternoon in October 2025, when the idea suddenly came alive. What followed was a fast and intense development process. Marc started with handwritten index cards, then ran round after round of playtesting in classrooms, break rooms, and at home. A near final version was later tested in a graduate school course.
Along the way, Marc's wife CJ, the game's illustrator, gave Acrosticism its visual identity and created the art that now appears on the box.
Acrosticism is Marc's first published game. It was designed with one goal above all: to be genuinely fun. The fact that it works so well across ages, personalities, skill levels, and professional fields was a happy surprise, repeatedly confirmed by playtesters in very different rooms.
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