Palace of Versailles

#225
Nice Games Jam: "Palace of Versailles"
2021.07.14
Picture of garden at Palace of Versailles

Your nice hosts come together for their first Nice Games Jam in person in a very long time! Did seeing each other together result in even wilder game jam shenanigans than you'd expect? Listen to the episode to find out!

Prompt
We used Ellen's PlayThinker Deck to make this game! Goal card was "Efficiency", interaction cards were "Combination", "Approach", and "Exploration".
Game type
Card game
Player count
2-4
Materials

Basic 52 card deck (no jokers)

4 Meeples

12 Powerup tokens (3 different colors)

Setup

Shuffle deck and place cards in a 4 by 4 grid.

Give each player one meeple to represent them.

Rules
  • Player can move onto any card on their side of the grid as their first turn.
  • On their turn each player moves one card and reveals it, potentially giving you an ability
  • Revealing a face card gives you an item, which gives you one of the following abilities:
    • One gives the ability to move one more space.
    • One gives the ability to peek at one more card.
    • One gives the ability to move diagonally.
  • Getting three items allows you to take one turn to bank three items, losing those three abilities but giving you one point. 
  • Revealing an Ace removes all items that player’s have not banked. Bank your items to prevent losing a point!
  • Revealing the four corners refresh all unrevealed cards except cards that a player is on.
  • When the deck runs out, the game ends when all the board is revealed (no more refreshes, fill out the rest of the board with a shuffled discarded deck).
  • Whoever has the most points after that last round wins the game!