Icarus & his friends have crafted handmade wings. Day and night, jubilant with their newfound freedom, they fly higher & higher... A trick-taking game of flying, flipping, & trying not to soar into the hot, hot sun.
With competitive (2-5p) and co-operative (3-5p) modes, players win tricks to fly higher in the sky. The winner of each trick moves to the next open space above them on the scoring track unless they fly into the sun, in which case they will plummet to below the bottom-most player.
Every card has two different values which alternate - along with the trump suit - whenever a 5-card is played. With rules simple enough to teach in a few minutes, Trickarus is accessible for those unfamiliar with trick-taking, while also having enough challenge for more experienced trick-takers to experiment with different strategies.
- Chaotic and fun gameplay
- Engaging two-player mode
- Reversible card mechanics create interesting decisions
- Enhanced two-player experience with dummy player
- Can be chaotic and confusing initially
- Flying too close to the sun
- Mythological Greece (Icarus theme)
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- card flipping — Cards are two-sided and can invert values, changing the game state.
- Trick-Taking — The core mechanic is trick-taking.
- two-player variant — The game has an enhanced two-player mode with a dummy player.
- Variable Trump Suit — The trump suit can change, adding to the game's dynamic.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- In general, it's very interesting because you're not necessarily really playing poker. You're playing a communication game and you're using the conventions of poker as as what you're communicating and trying to give clues about.
- It was great at 10 players because there was a lot of discussion, a lot of like, oh, you know, or like the the problem is is that you have these side conversations and then people kind of don't see everything sometimes because it's a big group of people.
- It was so satisfying. We won and we were like, 'What the hell happened?'
- It's a cooperative poker game where you're cheating just to keep up with hell who's cheating.
- It was just a really brilliant design.