Carton frames its strategy and adventure around a handmade-looking world where landscapes, trees, buildings, and characters are all made of cardboard. Humanity is close to defeat in a long war with goblins, whose early access to advanced technology gave them the advantage. The player’s task is to establish a settlement and build toward a counterattack, tying town development to a larger conflict rather than treating construction as an end in itself.
Play moves between shaping a home and facing threats beyond it. Players generate and explore a continent, choose a place to settle, and purchase territory as they expand. Within town, they build, gather resources, and assign jobs to residents; decisions also affect nature. Changing seasons and temperatures add environmental pressure, while goblin raids make defending the settlement part of its routine. The design brings together resource management, survival, and tactical preparation in a setting whose visual theme is central to its identity.
As the settlement develops, players can form a group of warriors, repel attacks, and take the offensive against the goblin castle. Carton’s distinctive arc connects its small-scale systems, including jobs, territory, and seasonal change, with the larger objective of turning the war around.
