As a medieval ruler your aim is to develop crafts, build efficient production chains, and make your city thrive. Produce, transform, gather resources, and don't forget to hinder your opponents!

Artificium is a card-driven development game. Some cards produce resources or transform one type of resources into another and award victory points, while others let you perform actions. Carefully planning the chain of cards that you will play during the game turn is the key to success.

Artificium lasts four turns. At the start of each turn, players have five cards in hand, with six cards being face-up on the table as a card market. During the turn, players first have a chance to exchange some cards from their hands with those in the market, then they play and resolve their cards step by step, performing actions, trading and gathering resources, and most importantly, refining certain resources into other resources to earn victory points. Crystals on the players' individual resource boards keep track of their resources as they are bought and sold. Crystals placed beside the board represent player's coins. The final score is determined after the fourth turn, with players selling any remaining resources to score additional victory points (one point per four coins). The player with the most victory points is considered to be the wisest medieval ruler and is declared the winner.