Collector’s Mess Press kit.
A cozy first-person collecting game in a house buried under 20,000 trading cards. Everything here is free to use in coverage, videos and streams of the game.
About the game
TCG: Collector’s Mess takes place in a furnished house with about 20,000 physical trading cards spread across nine rooms. You restore each room by clearing its mess: sweep cards up by the handful, file them into binders and boxes, sort them on mats and sell the spares. At 97% tidy a room is restored, and three restored rooms open the stuck basement door and the old archive below it.
There are 1,000 card designs in 10 sets and 7 rarities. Booster packs arrive in a delivery box somewhere in the house; you tear the wrapper open by hand and flip the cards one at a time. Once every room is restored, a second collection waits in a carton by the front door.
There are no card battles, no timers and nothing sold for real money. It’s about finding, sorting and keeping a collection.
Factsheet
- Developer
- Jace Sleeman (solo developer)
- Publisher
- IronStack LLC
- Released
- October 16, 2026, on Steam
- Version
- 0.2.2 (October 21, 2026)
- Platforms
- Windows (64-bit) and native Linux (64-bit)
- Price
- $4.99 USD (Steam sets regional prices)
- Free demo
- The first four rooms and three of the ten card sets; progress carries over
- Genre
- Cozy first-person collecting game, hobby sim
- Players
- Single-player
- Languages
- English, French, German, Spanish (Spain), Spanish (Latin America), Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian
- Input
- Keyboard and mouse, or a controller, with Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo and Steam Deck prompts
- Steam
- 37 achievements, Steam Cloud saves
- Press contact
- contact@ironstacksoftware.com
A house to restore
Nine rooms, each under its own mess. Tidiness climbs as you clear the floor, the lamps brighten, and a restored room pays a reward plus a super rare or better. Three restored rooms open the basement archive.
1,000 designs in 10 sets
Seven rarities from common to mythic, foils with a finish for each rarity, card conditions, and print quirks: misprints, club promos, price stickers and handwritten keepsakes.
One hand for handling cards
It holds up to 50 cards. Sweep, gather, inspect, flip, sleeve, top-load, favorite, set a pile down, or throw a card into a basket across the room.
Packs torn open by hand
Grab an edge and the rip follows your pointer. Flip one card at a time; the fifth card is always rare or better, and the shop shows its odds.
Binders and sorting
Nine-pocket binder pages show which collector numbers are missing. KEEP / TRADE / SELL sorting mats, storage boxes, and selling spares.
Fresh Mess
Once the house is restored, a carton by the front door spills a whole new 20,000-card collection through every room, with more foils, more Mint copies, and secret rares and mythics on the floor.
Gilded editions
Rare and better cards can turn up gilded, with a burnished gold border. The Gilded showcase has a pocket for each set’s four secret rares and its mythic.
Collectors and commissions
Trade with three collectors, each with their own taste. From your sixth trade with each one, every third request is a commission that pays with a gilded card.
Relaxed by design
No card battles, no timers, no dailies and nothing sold for real money. Play continues after the finale.
Screenshots
1920×1080 originals are in the kit. Screenshots 1 to 7 come from version 0.2.0; 8 to 12 show menus that haven’t changed since.
Logo and art
The kit has the logo as a transparent PNG, the Steam capsules (header, main, small and vertical) and wide key art without a logo. The trailer is on the Steam page.
Update history
- 0.2.2
October 21, 2026 - A free binder for the first big handful you file from a set you have no binder for, clearer hints about where each card goes, a kitchen bin for crumpled wrappers, and more starter-set cards in a new collection’s bedroom.
- 0.2.1
October 20, 2026 - Take tray cards straight into your hand, or all at once with Take all into hand.
- 0.2.0
October 19, 2026 - Fresh Mess rounds after the house is restored, Gilded editions and the Gilded showcase, collector commissions, and six new achievements.
- 0.1.1
October 18, 2026 - A clearer start and optional Collector’s rules: Relaxed, Thrifty or Purist.
- 0.1.0
October 16, 2026 - Launch on Steam, with a free demo.
Please don’t claim
It isn’t Steam Deck Verified and hasn’t been tested on a Steam Deck, though the Deck button prompts exist. It hasn’t been tested with physical controllers yet. There’s no Mac version, no multiplayer and no card battles.