The game I chose to play for my game review is one that I had never heard of before, and one that my friend who explained the game didn’t know the name of. We discovered the name upon playing the game, and I would say “six card golf” is the closest fitting name.
Gameplay
The game is playable with 3-6 players. I played it with 3 of my friends. It’s a card game played with poker cards. We mixed two decks of cards to play it. Each player is dealt 4 cards to begin with. There are general draw and discard piles. The dealer begins the game. The objective of the game is for your cards to add up to the lowest possible number. At the end of the game, the winner is the player with the smallest sum of cards. The dealer deals the cards face down, and the players are not allowed to look at their cards when the cards are being dealt to them. Once all cards have been dealt, the player who begins the game chooses to either look at all 4 of their cards or can choose to look 3, 2, 1, or none of their cards. For the duration that the first player is looking at their cards, the other players are allowed to look as well, and the same number of cards. Hence, the players must exercise good memory!
How the summing works:
- cards with numbers like 2-10 add up normally
- a black king denotes 10 points
- a red king denotes 0 points
- an Ace denotes 1 point and it allows players to add cards to other players’ piles
- a Queen denotes 12 points and allows players to peek at their cards
- a Jack denotes 11 points and allows players to swap one of their cards with either one of the players’ cards or swap the cards of two players
The play can either go clockwise or counter-clockwise. In each turn, the player may either take a card from the draw or discard pile, but once they do, they have to put one of their 4 cards down in the discard pile. They also have the option of drawing a card and immediately discarding it, if they believe that their hand is better without it. If a player plays a card and another player has a card of the same value, they can stack it, i.e., put it down out of turn, which lets them continue with fewer cards in their deck. Lastly, if a player believes that they have the best hand possible, relative to other players, they may call to end the game, upon which all other players take their turn, and the game ends. If a player is mistaken about the cards they have and play any of the moves above, they must draw an extra card.
Game Strategy
This game is different from a lot of the board games we discuss in class in that its rules are malleable and the players can change them more at will than the board games, which are more structured with the gameplay. Some of what made this game fun and playable was the confusion, the freedom with which the rules – if needed – could be modified to make the game more/less competitive, and the simple rule system. This game is very similar to games like bluff or go fish! in requiring players to be secretive about their cards, read other players’ movements, etc. Something I find interesting about card games like this is that they make players feel like the stakes are very high and gameplay can get highly competitive, while at the same time, the stakes remain very low. Card games like this one are distinct from other board/card games because players who feel the stakes are high and players who feel the stakes are low can coexist during play, while maintaining similar levels of competition and strategy. While this game challenges players’ memory recall, it is perhaps best played with loved ones because the fun is out of taking advantage of their idiosyncrasies.
Author: Antrita Manduva
