Splendor Duel

 

The Game

Splendor Duel is the two player spinoff of the hugely popular Splendor. It retains the core mechanism and adds on some new ones, making it a little more complex. Think of it as slightly advanced Splendor and specifically designed for two. 

The core idea in the game is you collect gems then spend them to claim cards. Cards act as discounts for future cards you claim, and some cards have point values. The game is a race to reach a specific number of victory points. 

In the game there are gems in five colours, pearls and gold. I'll call them all treasures. Pearls are rarer than gems and no cards give pearl discounts. Gold is best because it is wild. Unlike the original Splendor where you may collect any three treasures available, in Splendor Duel you claim treasures from a 5x5 grid and you claim up to three in a straight line. Treasures are not immediately refilled. It is only done when a player performs a special action. When replenishing the board, it likely will not be full, because there are still treasures in the hands of players. The number of treasures is finite. 

Cards in the game have price tags - what are the treasures you need to pay to claim it. When you have the right treasures you can pay to claim the card. From that point onwards the card is a discount voucher. For example if you claim a red card, in future you can always pay one red gem fewer when you claim any card that requires red gems. This doesn’t seem like much initially but it will add up. 

Let’s talk about how you win. Some cards have point values. If you reach 20, you win. If for any one specific colour you have 10 points, you also win. In the screenshot above I have four points in red. Some cards have a crown icon. This is effectively another type of victory point. If you get 10 crowns, you win. So there are three win conditions. 

There are several other quirks, e.g. some cards have one-time powers. Scrolls are a special currency which let you claim an extra treasure. Your opponent gets a scroll when you perform certain actions, like refilling the board. Like the original, when you claim a single gold, you also reserve a card. Reserving means claiming a card without making payment yet. The card does not take effect and only goes to your reserve area. You have to pay for it on a future turn before it takes effect. You can reserve a card for the sake of denying your opponent. Also, this is the only way you take gold.

The Play

Splendor Duel feels familiar because most the elements in the original are here too. If you like Splendor you will feel right at home. Despite appearing simple, this is a game you should play with a plan in mind. You should look at the high valued cards and plan how to be able to eventually afford them. The cheaper cards that you claim should be part of a deliberate long term plan and should not be picked at will. You need to watch your opponent to see if you are aiming for the same cards. If you are not going to beat him to a specific card, you might as well switch tact and aim for something else. You can be nasty and reserve a card you know he wants. Just remember your reserve can only take three cards. 

The Thoughts

The beauty of the original Splendor is in its simplicity. Splendor Duel still has a smooth gameplay experience, in that every turn is simple and short. However it does add several elements and give you more to think about. You can’t take any treasure you want. You are limited by the positions of the treasures on the grid. An important skill still required is having a long term plan and aligning individual turns to maximise your progress towards your long term goal. Gosh this sentence sound like I’m doing management training. 

Splendor Duel is a light to medium strategy game. It’ll work as a gamer spouse game. 

War Chest

The Game

War Chest is a two-player abstract battle game with a deck-building element. You send soldiers to fight on a hex-based board. You win by controlling 6 bases on the board. 

Each player has four different troop types, and they are all unique. So there are 8 different soldiers in play. The soldiers have different abilities. Generally they don't differ by attack strength, defense strength or health points. Think of all of these as being just 1. So this is like chess. Anyone can one-hit KO anyone else. Let's talk about the deck-building element first. 

At the start of the game, for each of your troop type you have some discs. Some are in play, but some are not yet in circulation. You need to perform a purchase action to bring them into play. Every round, you draw three discs from your bag, and you and your opponent take turns spending a disc to perform an action. The disc you spend determines what you can do. You can't see the discs in your opponent's hand, so you don't know what he can possibly do that round, until he actually performs actions. Most of the time you can see the disc spent when he acts, so you can keep track of how many discs in which colours he has spent. However sometimes the disc spent is hidden, so you may not have full information. 

Actions you can perform include deploying a soldier, moving a soldier, attacking with a soldier, fortifying a soldier, buying a disc, and changing the turn order. Most (but not all) discs belong to a specific troop type, which means you can only use it on that specific soldier. Every cycle that you go through the discs in your bag, you know how many actions one soldier can take. It is limited by the number of discs that soldier has in your bag. This is the deck-building in War Chest. 

The troop types have various unique abilities. For example, light cavalry can move two steps instead of one. The lancer makes a long range attack, but it can only make such long range attacks, which must be in a straight line. They can't do a normal melee attack. The ensign can move other soldiers on the same team. This is a supportive role. When you kill the opponent's soldier, he is not lost permanently. Your opponent can resurrect that soldier by spending the associated disc, redeploying him to a controlled base. 

Bases are scattered around the board. Each player already controls two at the start of the game. You control a base when your soldier occupies it. You can spend a disc to lock a base, allowing you to retain control even if your soldier leaves. However such a base is still vulnerable to your opponent's soldiers. 

The Play

The game looks chess-like, but a big difference is how you must manage your bag of discs and keep track of your opponent's bag too. You don't know exactly the discs in your opponent's hand, and thus you don't know what moves he can make. I was rather sloppy when playing the game, probably because I played in asynchronous online mode. I didn't properly keep track of Han's bag. Not even my own. It is no wonder I fared poorly. I wanted to do something with a specific soldier, but I forgot I had run out of discs for him. My tempo was off. I did not deliberately tune my disc distribution. I probably should have planned more deliberately which discs to buy and even whether to buy at all. If I focus on only getting more discs for one or two soldier types, they might become more nimble because there are more of their discs compared to the others. 

The Thoughts

War Chest is not quite my thing. Partly because I'm not really into chess-like games, and partly because I am sloppy with keeping track of the bags and discs. Because of that, it feels like I am highly restricted in what I can do. 

Tower Up

The Game

Tower Up is a game about constructing high-rise buildings. You collect blocks in four colours and then use them to construct buildings. You participate in multiple construction projects. The taller the buildings you are involved in, the more points you will score. This is a game with a spatial element. 

A turn is simple. You only have two options. You may pick one out of three resource cards, which will let you collect blocks. After that the card is discarded and a new one is drawn to replace it. Alternatively you may spend your blocks to construct a new building and upgrade other buildings next to it. Buildings come in four different colours. To construct a new building, you must pick a vacant spot which is next to an existing building. The colour of the new building must be different from all adjacent buildings. If you don't have the right colour, you can't build. When you build, you must also upgrade every building next to the new building. You upgrade them by adding a block of the same colour as these existing buildings. That means you also need to have the right colours in stock. If you don't, you can't build. If you have all the necessary blocks and manage to build, you now have the option of adding a roof in your colour to either the new building or one of the buildings being upgraded. Participation in a building helps you score points. Having added your roof doesn't mean that building can no longer be upgraded further. It is still possible to add more blocks on top of the roof, further extending the building. It is possible for others to join you at a building where you have a roof. They will build above your roof. 

These are the player boards. You can see everyone's blocks on the left of the boards. The vehicles track the number of blocks in each colour in buildings you are participating in. Some resource cards also let you advance your vehicles. At the end of the game, you score points based on the positions of your vehicles. 

That traffic cone at the bottom is for tracking how many of your roofs are visible from above. Roofs can be covered by blocks. Lucrative (i.e. tall) buildings will attract other players. They will want to add blocks so that they too can add their roofs and be part of the project. The more visible-from-above roofs you have at game end, the more points you will score. 

The three cards with green backgrounds are missions. When you fulfil the specified condition, you claim a point token. The first to complete a mission claims 7 points. Second place is 5 points, and third place 3 points. Taking the mission in the centre as an example, the condition is you must have participated in projects in all five districts on the map. 

The game ends when one player uses up all ten of his roofs. 

The Play

Gameplay is pleasant and smooth. You only have two options, collecting blocks or constructing. Blocks you have in hand determine whether and where you can construct. Every land plot can only be used once for starting a construction project. Thereafter you are upgrading the building by constructing in an adjacent plot. Players will compete for construction opportunities. Building heights can vary depending on where players construct first. It is beautiful to watch the city grow. It feels organic. 

You want to advance your cars evenly. Whenever you have all cars pass a certain threshold, you get an extra turn. That is significant. The traffic cone is an interesting consideration. It encourages you to wait and see, and let others construct tall buildings, so that later on you can swoop in to leave your roof at the top. Well, everyone is thinking the same thing. 

When I played, I decided to focus on the missions. I rushed and was first to complete all of them. That was satisfying. However I realised the point difference is not actually that big. Being first made me happy, but it did not necessarily help me much towards victory. That's okay. Happiness is important too. 

This is an open information game. You know what blocks your opponents have, where they can or cannot construct, and also which plots are lucrative to them. This game can be prone to analysis paralysis if you play that way. However it is not a complex game, so even if you want to analyse, it doesn't take too long. 

The Thoughts

In many Euro style boardgames, the board is a pretty tracker or spreadsheet. You don't play the board much. In Tower Up, the board is a big part of gameplay. It is refreshing, and I feel nostalgic even, to play a game where the game board has a major role. It makes me feel happy and grounded. 

boop.

The Game

Boop (technically written as boop. ) is a two player abstract game. The whole idea is based on how cats love to push items off tables and shelves, sometimes breaking them. I find this premise hilarious. Thankfully my cats don’t actually do this. To win the game, you need to have three cats in a row, i.e. just like tic tac toe. Or you need to have all 8 cats on the board.

You don’t start the game with cats. You start with 8 kittens, which can grow up to be cats. On your turn you just place one piece on the board. It pushes away all pieces next to it, possibly pushing some off the board. Pieces that drop off go back to the owner’s supply. You do push your own pieces. There are only two situations when pushing doesn’t work. If there is a piece on the other side of a piece being pushed, it prevents pushing. If a kitten tries to push a cat, the cat stays. Whenever you make three in a row, the pieces are removed and get converted to cats if any are kittens. That’s how kittens grow. Of course if you have three cats in a row you already win.

That’s all there is to the game.

The Play

This sounds like a silly and cute game, but it’s actually a serious thinky game, like most open information abstract games. There are few rules, so this is certainly much simpler than chess. Online asynchronous is probably not an ideal way to play, because the game takes many moves. You make one small move, and then have to wait for your opponent to take his move. Since there are many turns, a game can drag a long time. Online real-time would be fine. Or maybe Han and I just sucked at learning the game and we flailed about too much. 

In our game we managed to upgrade all our kittens to cats. After that the game went on for quite a bit more. We were caught in an ebb and flow cycle of placing cats then having them pushed off the board. We couldn't quite figure out how to position ourselves for three cats in a row. 

I was grey, and I had two diagonally adjacent cats. If I placed a cat on either end, I would win, because I wouldn't be able to push two cats in a row. However it was easy for Han to place an orange cat to disperse my two grey cats. 

This was the eventual checkmate situation. I had two pairs of grey cats adjacent to each other. They were far apart and Han could not disrupt both. But I don't remember how I did it. I did consider trying to squeeze 8 cats onto the board, but that didn't seem to be easy either. The board wasn't that big. 

The Thoughts

This is a cute little abstract game. It's a decent filler. I am absolutely tickled by the premise of cats pushing things off tables. The simplicity of the game is welcoming. You will be able to get almost anyone to be willing to give it a go. 

Fromage

 

The Game

Fromage is French and it means cheese. So this is a game about making cheese. The quirk about this game is the rotating game board. It is divided into four segments. On your turn you can only do things in the segment facing you. Your opponents perform actions at the same time, but in their own segments. Once everyone is done, you rotate the board, and you get a new segment facing you. 

This is a worker placement game. You have three workers who make white, yellow and blue cheese respectively. You place them on the board to do stuff. The more powerful the action, the longer they stay at the spot. If you send them to do long tasks, you may find yourself having no worker to assign on your next turn, because they are still busy. Many things you do will let you place a cheese marker on the board. These score points in different ways when the game ends. The game ends when one player uses all his cheese markers. 

On your turn you can place at most two workers, one to collect resources, the other to make cheese. Making cheese means placing your cheese marker on the board, permanently claiming a spot. Each spot is associated with a specific cheese type (white, yellow or blue) and a grade (bronze, silver or gold). To claim a spot you must use a worker of the matching cheese type. The grade is an indication of how valuable a spot is, and how long your worker will be stuck there. Usually the higher grade spots will give you more points. 

The four segments are like four different mini games. One segment has tables with two spots each. Every cheese placed is worth points but the more fully claimed tables you have (i.e. claiming both spots), the higher the value of every cheese. One segment is a map of France divided into six regions. You place cheese to exert influence over the regions. Every region is scored at game end, giving points to those with the most influence. You still get points if tied for most influence, but it is much lower than if you are the sole winner. 

One segment has multiple shelves, each giving a different benefit. Your cheese score additional points at game end when they occupy multiple shelves. The last segment is a grid and you score points by having cheese on connected squares.

You have a player board where you keep track of your resources. Building materials you collect can be used to construct buildings, which give you special abilities, like scoring bonus points based on certain criteria, and having a personal worker placement spot. Livestock you collect can be converted to specific cheese types and placed on the board. This is a way to place more than one piece of cheese on your turn. Fruits you collect are needed for some spots on the board which require some special cheese which contain fruits. Cards you collect are missions you can complete to get more points. 

The Play

There seem to be many rules, but they are all simple. It’s like playing four simple games at the same time. Planning how to use your workers can be a little tricky, because you only have one for each cheese type. If there is a particular spot you want to claim two turns in the future and it’s a blue cheese spot, you’d better make sure your blue cheese worker is freed up by then. 

There is competition at all four segments. You will be fighting for spots. Sometimes you want to claim a spot just for the sake of denying an opponent, even if it doesn’t help you much. You want to somewhat focus on a few areas. Generally the nature of scoring is the more you invest in an area, the bigger the returns per cheese. Having some focus is better than doing everything evenly. 

You have to watch your opponents. You need to have a sense of how soon the game will end, and plan accordingly. This is a game which requires some planning ahead. You have to plan the jobs for your workers, so you have to consider the other segments which are not in front of you, not just the one you can act in now. 

The Thoughts

Fromage puts a fun twist in worker placement. Each of the mini games aren’t particularly exciting, but the overall package is an interesting experience. There is no directly attacking your opponents, but you can certainly be nasty by blocking the spots they want. Most of the game is open information. Everyone can tell what you want to do. I played the digital implementation of the game. I’m sure it would be even more fun with the physical copy. You get to play with a lazy Susan. This is a light strategy game which will work for families. 

Molly House

The Game

Molly House is set in 18th century London. It is a game about people with unconventional tastes and desires. The rulebook isn't very explicit in explaining this. I interpret it as gay and lesbian circles. Yes, you're gay, and in that day and age homosexuality is not generally understood nor is it accepted. You are going to hold parties, have fun, and ultimately you want to create awareness and promote acceptance. Now things can go bad because some people in power do not like this and may clamp down on such inappropriate activities. If you are one of the notorious, you may get arrested and punished, possibly ending up getting hanged. The game can end in different ways. If the community becomes accepted, the person who is most prominent wins. However if the community is persecuted, then only those who betray the community and become informants may win. The third way the game ends is when neither happens by the end of the fifth round. Everyone loses. 

My first thought upon setting eyes on this game board was this. Is someone going to ask me "Is this like Monopoly?" - that most dreaded question of boardgamers worldwide. I must admit this does remind me a little of Monopoly. That track around the edges is indeed for pawns to move along. The four corners are important locations - molly houses where you hold parties, score points and create awareness about the community. In the middle of the four streets (i.e. the equivalent of the railroad stations in Monopoly) are shops where you get to acquire tools. 

The cards come in four suits, each representing one of the four molly houses, i.e. your party venues. A game round ends whenever you exhaust the deck. At the end of a round, the police does their investigation, possibly closing down shops and arresting people. They investigate the gossip discard pile. There are two discard piles in the game - the gossip pile and the secret pile. Gossip is bad and secret is good. Secret means you hold your parties discreetly. Gossip means you are being careless and bold, and this can endanger the community. Under different situations, used or discarded cards go to one or the other discard pile. This is something you need to be mindful of.

The basic actions on your turn are simple. You roll the dice and move, non unlike Monopoly, mind you. Then you get to perform an action depending on where you land. There are two types of icons on the dice - card and boot. They mean discarding a card from the general display, and moving one step. You must use one or both dice to move. You may move clockwise or counter-clockwise. You will move between 0 to 4 steps. Using this photo above as an example, you may choose to either not move or move one step. Depending on where you land, you may take a card, acquire a tool, or hold a party. You can also decide to do nothing. 

Parties are the most important part of the game. It is the main way you score points. You may score points for yourself, and you may help the community in general score points. This means the community is getting more understanding and acceptance by society. If you land on one of the houses, you may initiate a party. To have a successful party, you must be able to make specific card combos using the cards contributed by players. As host, you must contribute 2 cards. Cards are drawn from the deck as well. Others may decide how many cards they want to contribute. After all cards are played, the strongest combo is picked, and whoever has contributed to that gains something. If the cards from the deck are involved, then the community scores points. If there are two or more best combinations, as host you get to choose whose cards to use. In case you can't make any valid combo, the weakest cards will be used. As host, you will lose points. The community loses points too. A dull party is bad. 

These are the combos you want to make when throwing a party. You need four cards to make a combo. The first one is a straight flush. The second a Q plus three of a kind. The third a J with a straight. Before you decide to hold a party, you can ask whether the other players want to join you, and what cards they have. They can't show you their cards before the party, so they might lie. They may promise to play certain cards, but promises are not binding. Parties can be a form of collaboration, since everyone whose cards are used gets something. However, beware of people who encourage you to start something but eventually never contribute. Wait... why does this sound familiar? 

When examining the gossip pile, you categorise the cards into two, threat cards and normal cards. Each of the four suits are checked separately, to see how much investigation the authorities are making. Let's use this photo above as an example. Let's look at the yellow cards. That card in the middle is a threat card. Those two beside it are normal cards. With 1 threat card and 2 normal cards, the investigation value is 1 x 2 = 2.  When a molly house accumulates 7 points of investigation, it gets raided, and the best known patrons of that house get arrested. You may be sentenced to lose points, or possibly death. The punishments are meted out only at the end of the game, because during the game indictments may get pardoned, if you turn traitor and help the authorities clamp down on fringe activities. 

This is an indictment card. At game end you roll a die to determine the outcome. Dice are 10-sided, from 0 to 9, so 6+ means 40% of getting hanged. If you still hold this card by game end, it's either losing points or dying. 

The cubes represent investigation. When a house gets seven, it is raided and shut down. No more parties here. Shoo! 

You use these markers to decide whether you are going to betray the community. If you ever play the black one on the board (face-down), it means you intend to become an informant. You will ever play at most three of the markers. Other players who catch you can flip one of your markers. By doing so they are accusing you of being a traitor. If the marker they flip is the black one, you are exposed and they score points. However if they reveal a white one, they lose points. If you are indeed an informant and you get caught by a fellow player, it becomes difficult for you to do anything at the particular house you have planned to leak information about. If the game ends with the community being persecuted, only traitors have any chance of winning. They win only if the information they have provided actually help the authorities in making arrests. When you see the situation become hopeless and society is not ready to accept you, you may well need to consider turning traitor. 

The Play

Molly House is a challenging game to learn. It uses several unconventional mechanisms, which make the game feel unintuitive. It tries to convey a story and the dynamics behind it. When you understand that underlying story, the game mechanisms make more sense. Still, there are many special situations and corresponding rules for each of them, and this can be overwhelming. There are three ways the game ends, and under different scenarios, the measure for victory is different. The game is immersive. You and your fellow players are part of the same community, and you want what's best for the community. Yet you are also competing to be the most popular. When the authorities start clamping down, the option to turn traitor becomes hard to resist, especially when your life is on the line. This is not a cooperative game, yet there are many aspects in which you need to collaborate. 

Many of Cole Wehrle's games have this kind of dynamic. A big part of the game is about manipulating the way the game ends. You can't just simplistically pursue points, because there are different types of points, and depending on the game end situation, some points become irrelevant. You need to know how the game ends so that you put your effort into what matters. This is not easy to manage. You are watching how the situation evolves, evaluating how you are doing compared to your opponents, and trying to steer this all in a direction that benefits you. 

There is an interesting tension between competition and collaboration, for example when you need to hold parties. You want to leverage on the resources of other players. You want to collaborate with others frequently because that will help you. You may not want to run too far ahead, because if you are doing well and the community is doing well too, someone will probably sabotage the efforts of the community and steer the game towards doom. If you are doing well, you may want to allow your opponents to trail only slightly. Give them hope and encourage them to help the community, so that when the community wins, you win too by the gayest of them all. 

In the game we played, I was the most prominent when the first molly house was raided. I became public enemy number one. The indictment card I drew could get me the death penalty. Now I had to decide whether to betray my friends. I thought it would be too obvious, and someone would quickly confront me, so I decided to stay loyal to the cause. My thinking was someone would come accuse me, only to find that I was loyal, and he would lose points. However to my surprise no one bothered. Sigh... I should not have bothered. I should have turned traitor. The clamping down became more severe, and eventually the community lost. Had I turned traitor, I could have won. All of us lost. Our only consolation was at least we lost with dignity. 

The Thoughts

Molly House is a game with a lot of character. I love the art and the components. I consider this a historical game. I certainly learned something from playing it. This is not an easy game to learn. Expect to refer to the rules frequently. This is the kind of game seasoned gamers will enjoy exploring. I like how daring the designers are in coming up with their own ways to convey the story. Just be prepared it takes some effort to play. 

A big part of the game is manipulating how it will all end. You always need to keep this in mind. For the first half of the game, you can't be certain how things will turn out, and you can't be certain which of the actions you take will ultimately matter. That's a little unsettling. I enjoy figuring out the game and the dynamics among players. This is ultimately still a competitive game. However as you get immersed into the story, when you eventually decide to backstab your mate, you will feel a little guilty, and dirty. 

Dracula vs Van Helsing

The Game

Dracula vs Van Helsing is a short 2-player card game played over 5 rounds. Van Helsing need to kill Dracula before time runs out. Dracula wins by surviving. He also wins if he is able to bite and transform all villagers of one district. 

This is a lane battle game. Between the two players there are five districts each with four villagers. At the start of a round each player gets five cards, each allocated to one district. You can see your own cards but not your opponent’s. Cards determine your strength in a district. Strengths are compared at the end of a round for all five districts. If Van Helsing wins a district, he deals damage to Dracula. If Dracula wins, he bites one villager. 

There is a trump suit. Cards in that suit always beats other suits. Else the larger number wins. If tied, resolve by suit strength. 

A turn is very simple. Normally you just draw a card then play a card for its power. The card you draw can be used to replace an existing card. The card being discarded will have its power triggered. Each card rank has its own power. The higher ranked cards have stronger powers so it’s a dilemma trying to decide whether to keep this high card or to use the strong power. The lowest card has a bad power. You are forced to reveal one of your cards. If you want to discard a low card, you have to suffer this penalty. 

Other powers in the game include revealing your opponent’s card, changing the trump suit, exchanging a card, revealing the next card in the deck (i.e. what your opponent will draw). A round ends when a player passes. The opponent gets one last turn, and the round ends. You compare the five districts to see how many villagers get bitten and much damage is dealt to Dracula. 

The rightmost icon (red) is the trump suit. 

The Play 

Every round starts with many unknowns, and as the round progresses you get more and more information. You can certainly card count. Your opponent’s actions give you clues too. However consider too that they might be feinting. Choosing when to pass is often tricky.  Your opponent only gets one action but sometimes that one action can be pivotal. 

You have limited control in this game since you don’t have a hand of cards. You only draw one card and you must use it or swap it with one of your existing cards. Still there are meaningful decisions to be made. 

The Thoughts

Dracula vs Van Helsing is a clever little 2-player card game. It’s a decent spouse game and filler. 

Dracula wins because all four villagers in the 4th district have been bitten. 

Pinocchio going to print

The game I plan to publish in 2025 under the Cili Padi Games label is Pinocchio, my fourth game (not counting the second Malaysian edition of Dancing Queen). The art is done, and it is going to the manufacturer to schedule production. Pinocchio is a simple card game. The main components are just 14 cards. Other cards in the box are supporting components, for score keeping and for player reference. The box will be about the size of a standard deck of poker cards. Pocket-sized. It will be a tuck box. 

Cards in Pinocchio are numbered from 0 to 20. Two of 0, 1, 2,  3, 5, and 6, and one of 10 and 20. The easiest way to describe the game is it is like Liar's Dice. In fact an earlier working name for the game was Liar's Deck. It is even simpler than Liar's Dice. In Asia, Liar's Dice is often played as a drinking game. You can play Pinocchio as one too, but please drink responsibly. 

In Pinocchio, a round starts with one card being revealed, and the start player drawing a card. He looks at it and then placed it face-down before him. He then announces what it is. He may lie. From the next player onwards, a turn works like this. You only have two options. Challenge the previous player, or draw a card. Challenging the previous player is not actually about calling him a liar. It is about saying that the total of all cards drawn (including the revealed card and all players' cards) has now exceeded 21. Once you challenge, everyone reveals his cards. If the total is indeed more than 21, the previous player takes a penalty. Otherwise, you do. Very simple. The difficulty is in guessing whether the total has exceeded 21, because you can't be sure whether everyone has been truthful. 

If you decide to draw, you announce it first before actually drawing a card. This is to give an opportunity to everyone else to issue a double challenge. A double challenge works the same way. It is called a double challenge because the penalty is doubled. 

The game mechanism is simple. I chose to publish this game because it is something non-gamers can easily learn to play, and are able to quickly find the fun. The games I am publishing seem to be getting simpler. My first game Dancing Queen is a short game, but it is by no means simple. It is a filler for gamers. It is difficult for non-gamers to learn by themselves. Snow White and the Eleven Dwarfs is much simpler, perhaps even more so than my third game Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Ali Baba and Pinocchio have one thing in common. In Ali Baba you don't want the total to exceed 11. In Pinocchio you don't want the total to exceed 21. However in Ali Baba all cards chosen are revealed. In Pinocchio the players announce the values without revealing the cards. The cards are only revealed when a challenge is issued. 

Donkeys are your "points". When you get a penalty, you get a donkey. Reach four donkeys and you lose, and the game ends. The player with the fewest donkeys wins. 

Card back

I am to release Pinocchio on or before 11 July 2025, which is the Asian Board Games Festival (Malaysia) that will be held in Penang. Come give it a go!