WYNGO

WYNGO is a trick-taking card game for 2 to 5 players. Every player bids the exact number of tricks they will win, and the total of the bids must never be nine. At least one player is therefore guaranteed to miss their contract, and everyone knows it before a single card is played.

There is no trump colour, and no obligation to follow the led colour: on every trick each player simply plays any card they like. The highest number takes the trick whatever its colour, and on equal numbers colour breaks the tie — Yellow, Blue, Green, Red, Indigo, from weakest to strongest. A high card takes the trick, a low one lets it go, and choosing which is the whole game, because a trick you did not want costs you as much as one you failed to win.

The card backs are coloured. You can see which colours your opponents hold, but never the values, so you can work out who is still able to take a trick and who can only shed cards. Jokers and Zeros share the same purple back and are the only cards played face down: a Joker beats everything, a Zero loses to everything, and until the trick is over nobody knows which of the two has just been played. Between two Jokers, the first one played wins.

The player to the dealer's left bids first and leads the first trick; the dealer bids last, so it falls to them to keep the total off nine. The deck is shuffled once, the first time the box is opened, and never again: the player to the dealer's right cuts it, no shuffling, and the dealer deals nine cards each. A contract met scores 30 points, each trick off costs 10, and the first player to 100 wins; if nobody has after 12 rounds, the best score takes it. Every colour carries its own geometric symbol and no card bears any text.

—description from the designer