Kinswinds is born of a desire for a deception game that focused more on information control and less on guesswork and odds.
The game attempts to simulate the power of suggestion, encouraging players to invest in the strongest card suits but also encouraging attempts to influence which suits other players believe are the strongest, not only through bluffing but also through actions.
Players move together through 5 steps whilst passing, discarding and activating card abilities, all of this giving them several options for altering the distribution of the cards and thus the score value of those cards. Players choose which cards they will score on during the game and in the fifth step can take a small points penalty to force the game to end if they think their chosen cards are worth the most.
At this point all hands are revealed, each player's chosen score cards are revealed and their value is calculated, the highest scoring player being declared the winner.
The game takes seconds to get running and comes in a pocket sized deckbox.
-description from designer