Three cats agreed upon settling their fight over who’s the top cat, and decided to organise a spice eating contest. Since everyone was soon cheating, they created Spicy, a card game that allows you to cheat – at least, as long as it goes unnoticed.
2-6 players, ages 10+
Playing Time: 15 minutes
Designer: Győri Zoltán Gábor
Artist: Jimin Kim
Publisher: HeidelBÄR Games
https://heidelbaer.de/en/
The game starts by dealing 6 cards to each player to form their hand, and placing the draw pile in the middle of the table.
Taking their turns in clockwise order, players either play or draw a card. When playing a card, you start a stack or play a higher card of the same spice, and you announce what card you’re allegedly playing.
When you think a player is bluffing and has played a different card than the one he declared, you may start a challenge on either wrong number or wrong spice, with the challenge winner collecting the spicy stack to score them as points at the end of the game. You can also score points by collecting trophies when you run out of cards.
The game ends when a player has 2 trophies, all 3 trophies were drawn, or when the World’s End card is reached in the draw pile. If a player manages to collect 2 trophies he wins, otherwise players tally their points from the trophies and cards they collected.
Spicy is a fast and fun bluffing card game, with an excellent production value. I’m really impressed by the unique art shown on the cards and their back is beautifully finished with foil.
The game is explained in just a couple of minutes and is played in about 15 minutes, which is perfect for this kind of game. Just like in other bluffing games, it’s very important to keep an eye on other players’ expressions to determine whether or not they’re telling the truth.
It also comes with 6 ‘Spice it up’ cards that change the basic rules of the game, keeping the game from becoming too monotonous or predictable after a few plays, and once you’ve tried them, you won’t play without.
If you’re into bluffing games, you’ll most certainly love Spicy!
Tabletopping 