The Game
Flip 7 is currently H, O, T, hot! I remember coming across it before it was this hot. I thought the game mechanism was clever indeed but I didn’t sit down to play or buy a copy. By now it has been nominated for and won several awards.
Flip 7 is a push-your-luck game and a party game. Every round everyone has a chance to score points. If you want to score more you need to take bigger risks. There is a risk of leaving empty handed. Cards in the game are numbered 0 to 12. There are twelve cards numbered 12, eleven cards numbered 11, and so on, down to a single 1 and also a single 0. Every round you start with one card. On your turn you choose to either draw a card or exit the round and score. If you exit, you score the sum of the values of your cards. Drawing means you are potentially increasing that sum, but if you draw a number you already have, you go bust and you are out of the round, scoring nothing.
If you manage to flip over 7 cards without going bust, you score a huge bonus. There are some special cards in the game. You can force another player out of a round. You can get an extra life, i.e. in case you draw a repeat number, you can discard it without going bust. You can also make one player draw several cards in a row (including yourself). That can force them to go bust, or possibly suddenly give them many points.
The game ends when anyone reaches 200 points. That’s all there is to the game.
The Play
I did a three player game with Allen and Han on BoardGameArena.com. The first thing I’ll say is this is a game that is best played in person. The excitement of seeing what card is revealed is mostly lost when the game is played in asynchronous mode. Han made it to seven cards once, but we weren’t there to cheer for him. It must have been a very exciting moment when you are on your sixth card and you need to decide whether to attempt the seventh.
There is certainly some luck in the game. If you are unlucky, you’ll go bust even on your second card. However you always have a sense of control because after all you are the one deciding whether to draw another card. Some cards seem to be very powerful take-that cards. At first I wondered whether this would lead to a poor play experience because players may feel they are arbitrarily attacked. Now that I have played the game, I realise these are a good way to balance the game, allowing players to slow down any unusually lucky leader who has sprinted far ahead.
Although you can only control your own fate, whether to draw a card is not a solo game type decision. If your opponents are far ahead, you’d need to take risks to catch up. If you are leading comfortably you probably want to go slow and steady, and get to 200 safely. So this is a game with good player interaction.
The Thoughts
Flip 7 is a game about gambling and greed. When you are behind, you will have that mindset of I just need to go big and I'll turn the tables in one round. You really see human psychology in play in this game. Yet this is a simple game. There is nothing particularly new about it, but it works very well and provides an enjoyable experience. Non-gamers will pick up the rules in no time. Experienced gamers will have fun with it too. The concept is so simple that it makes me wonder why this game wasn't already designed twenty years ago. Sometimes genius is in the simplicity.
