How to make your own spot-the-match game (a DIY Dobble)

The game many people know as Dobble (Spot It! in North America) rests on a single rule: any two cards in the deck share exactly one picture. Never none, never two. Players flip cards and race to find and name that one shared picture first.

It sounds simple, and that is exactly why it is so addictive. It trains attention, visual perception and quick naming, and even a three-year-old can learn it.

A boxed game has fixed pictures. Your own deck can be about anything you love or are learning:

• letters and sounds for pre-schoolers
• foreign-language vocabulary or speech-therapy pictures
• photos of the family, nursery friends or classmates
• your children’s drawings, their toys or pets
• a gift for a birthday, a wedding or a farewell
• the theme of a trip, a holiday, farm animals or space

You cannot deal pictures onto cards by eye so that any two cards share exactly one. The right arrangement comes from a branch of mathematics called the finite projective plane. Its cards correspond to lines and its pictures to points: any two lines meet in exactly one point.

That explains the “odd” deck sizes. If every card has n + 1 pictures, the deck has n² + n + 1 cards and as many different pictures. With 3 pictures per card that is 7 cards, with 4 pictures 13, with 6 pictures 31 and with 8 pictures 57 cards.

The well-known boxed game has 55 cards: the full 57-card deck with two cards left out. You can leave out any cards of a full deck and the “exactly one in common” rule still holds. SpotLab uses that, so you can have exactly as many cards as you want.

n + 1 pictures per card → n² + n + 1 cards

Try it

More pictures per card make a harder game. More cards make a longer game. Every size is free in SpotLab.

The 55-card deck still needs 57 pictures: you simply leave two cards of the full deck unprinted.

1. 1. Choose the deck size

   Pick the number of cards in the generator. SpotLab immediately tells you how many pictures you need.

2. 2. Add pictures

   Upload photos or drawings, or choose a ready-made set of emoji, shapes, letters or numbers. Sets can be combined.

3. 3. Remove backgrounds

   Remove photo backgrounds in one click so pictures stand out on the card. It happens right in your browser.

4. 4. Fine-tune the cards

   Move, rotate or resize any picture. Don’t like a card? Just shuffle it.

5. 5. Design the back

   Pick a pattern, a colour or your own picture for the back. It prints exactly behind the front.

6. 6. Print and cut

   Print the test card first, then download the PDF. Cut the cards out with scissors, a circle punch or a trimmer.

Well-printed cards survive years of play. A few tips from experience:

• Paper: 250–300 gsm card stock or photo paper. Thinner paper shows through and bends quickly.
• Print at actual size (100%). “Fit to page” shrinks the cards; the 5 cm line on the test card tells you.
• Size: 85 mm is the size of the best-known games. Small hands are fine with 70 mm; for a whole class around a table use 100 mm.
• A 2 mm bleed makes sure no white sliver is left on the edge of coloured cards after cutting.
• Double-sided: if your printer can’t print both sides, print the front sheets, turn them over and print the back sheet.
• Laminating: for nurseries and frequent play, laminate the cards. They will survive juice and teething.

A circle punch is fastest (search for “circle paper punch” with your card’s diameter, e.g. 2″ or 3″). For bigger cards use a circle cutter or a cutting machine (Cricut, Silhouette) fed with the SVG file.

No time to cut circles? Choose square cards: a paper trimmer cuts a whole deck in minutes, and they play just as well.

The core rule never changes: find and say out loud the one picture two cards share. The favourite variants:

Teachers use their own decks as playful revision:

• letters and syllables for early reading
• numbers, dice dots and simple sums
• English vocabulary with a picture on one card and the word on another
• animals, fruit or vehicles for the topic of the week
• photos of the class as a getting-to-know-you game at the start of the year

SpotLab vs Dobble · FAQ