AcaMania was designed by three national champion Academic Decathletes, with artwork by Tipatat Chennavasin. Players must race from the "pit" to the national competition, contending with four kinds of curriculum-related challenges--both creative and academic--along the way.

To make it around the board to the National Competition, teams of Decathletes must master five categories of game cards, ranging from the creative to the intellectual to the simply outrageous. Depending on what cards they draw, players could be required to change events from the curriculum, mimic philosophical figures, hum the music pieces, sketch artworks, answer true/false questions, unscramble important phrases and much, much more.