CARU-UTA: English Edition

CARU-UTA(狩歌) is a music party game that adapts caruta, the traditional Japanese card-grabbing game, to recorded music. Instead of a reader calling out verses, the players' own songs do the calling.

Lay the 120 word cards face up on the table and play any English-language song. Whenever you hear a word printed on a card, take that card before anyone else does. Six Moment cards work the same way but respond to events in the music rather than to lyrics — a chorus, a clap, an instrumental break — so a player who cannot catch every word still has cards to chase.

Ten Mixtape cards change the shape of a game. They set how long a round runs, which cards score and how ties are settled, turning the same deck into anything from a single-song sprint to a full-album endurance match.

When the music stops, the player holding the most cards wins. The English edition is not a translation of the Japanese game: its 120 word cards were written for English-language songs.