A prop that happens to be a phone.
AnyCards performs card magic. A spectator names any card and any number; the performer hands over the phone; the card is already there. Five performance modes cover the common effects — ACAAN, Multi-Force, Prediction, and two variants of POP — and each can be dressed in a different reveal style and a different themed deck.
This one is close to home. I have practised close-up magic for years, which is the only reason I knew where the real design problem was.
Every second spent looking at the screen is a second the trick is dead.
Magic apps usually fail the same way. The effect is sound, but setting it up in front of an audience takes visible tapping, and the moment a spectator watches you hunt through a menu, they stop watching a magician and start watching a phone.
So the interface has an unusual requirement: it has to be operable in the few seconds while attention is elsewhere, under bad light, one-handed, without the performer's eyes dropping to it for long — and it has to look like nothing at all if a spectator glances over.
Five taps from setup to impossible.
The whole app sits on near-black surfaces. Partly so it holds up in the dim rooms where close-up magic actually happens, and partly because a dark screen glimpsed sideways reads as an ordinary phone rather than as an app mid-configuration.
Big targets, dark surfaces, and setup that survives a glance.
Setup is built out of large, high-contrast targets rather than dense controls: rank and suit are picked from full grids where every tap lands, and the chosen cards sit visibly in a row so a mis-set force is obvious before the performance starts rather than during it. Modes are one list, one tap each, no nesting.
The theming system is the part I enjoyed most. Decks are not just card backs — each theme carries its own environment, so choosing Heritage or Bloodvine changes the surface the cards are dealt onto, not only the artwork on them.
Shipped to the App Store.
AnyCards is live. The free tier is a complete, performable app rather than a demo — it ships with a working effect you can actually use in front of people — and the one-time Pro unlock opens the remaining modes, reveal styles and decks. No subscription.
