What is the Wikidata Card Game Generator?

Updated

The Wikidata Card Game Generator is a free web tool at cardgame.blinry.org that builds a custom Top Trumps–style card game from Wikidata. You give it the entity ID of a topic (a "Q" number), and it generates a deck of 32 cards using real data about that topic. It's aimed at anyone who wants a quick, playable card game about a subject they care about — no design work required. It was made by bleeptrack and blinry for the Wikidata Workshop 2019 in Ulm, and the source code is on GitHub.

How it works

The generator doesn't use a hand-picked list of topics. Instead, it queries Wikidata for items that are instances of arbitrary subclasses of the topic you provide. From those items, it finds the properties that occur most often, then selects the 32 cards that have as many of those properties filled in as possible. Those properties become the stats you compare in the game.

In practice that means the deck reflects whatever data Wikidata actually holds about your topic — the more complete the data, the better the cards.

How to generate a deck

  1. Think of a topic and search for it on Wikidata.
  2. Find the entity ID near the top of the page — it starts with Q.
  3. Paste that ID into the box on cardgame.blinry.org.
  4. Click Generate.

The result is a set of cards suitable for playing Top Trumps. For example, the ID of chemical element is Q11344.

Topics you can try

The site suggests these starting points:

  • capital
  • metro system
  • country
  • astronomical body
  • island
  • hackerspace
  • computer model
  • telescope
  • card game

Any Wikidata topic with enough structured data can work, so this list is a starting point rather than a limit.

If your cards are missing data or images

The generator can only use what's in Wikidata. If a card comes out sparse, the fix is on the Wikidata side: add the missing information (or images) to the relevant items, then generate again. The tool's own suggestion is exactly that — contribute the data to Wikidata.

Practical notes

  • Input: a single Wikidata entity ID in Q format.
  • Output: a 32-card deck based on the most common properties among that topic's items.
  • Cost: the site presents itself as a generator you can use directly; no pricing information is given.
  • Feedback: ideas and bug reports go through the GitHub repository linked from the site.