Create one deck of tiles and shuffle it. Place a 5x5 grid of facedown tiles, but turn the main diagonals faceup. (For an easier game, reduce the grid to 4x4.)
The game ends when the map is completely cleared. (There are no more tiles on the table and it cannot be refilled from the deck.) Players sum the points on all tiles they scored: highest score wins!
Begin with the start player, then take clockwise turns until done.
On your turn, you flip a tile (faceup <=> facedown).
- Flipped faceup? Take its heart action (if it has one).
- Flipped facedown? Take its skull action (if it has one).
The most common action allows you to “score” a tile. This means you …
- Take the tile off the board to place it in your personal score pile.
- Then fill the gap with a new tile from the deck, always faceup.
- Crucially, you can only score facedown tiles and not the tile you just flipped. (Unless the action itself provides an exception.)
You can also clear the board in a second way. Any time an entire row or column is faceup, clear it from the board, and refill with facedown tiles from the deck.
Tiles have …
- A type: the big icon in the center.
- A score value: the numbers left and right of the type. (The value is constant per type.)
- A color/pattern at the edges. (This is mostly relevant for the expansions.)
- Zero, one or two actions.
The possible action types are …
- Heart: triggers when you flip the tile faceup.
- Skull: triggers when you flip the tile facedown.
- Star: a permanent power for when the tile is inside your score pile.
Actions are written in English on the tile itself. (Asking players to remember a myriad of icons is like turning this into a double-memory-game and proved too hard.)
When an action talks about a row, it means a straight row or column (from one end of the map to the other end)—you decide which of the two to use when taking the action.
That’s it! Have fun!
Played the game a few times and ready for more challenge? You’re in the right place! It’s recommended—but not required—to apply the expansions in order.
You might have noticed that the tiles all have colors as well. These come into play now.
You can score multiple tiles at the same time by making a faceup pattern: 3(+) tiles of the same color in a row.
As before, a “row” means horizontally or vertically.
This expansion also adds a wrinkle to the scoring rules.
- Collect all tiles that are cleared from the map in a separate pile.
- The type that appears the most in this pile turns into minus points.
Example: Strawberry appears most often in the forcibly cleared tiles. They are usually worth 3 points; now each is -3 points. (Ties are allowed, turning multiple types into negative ones.)
During setup, players get 3 tiles in their hand.
Your turn now has two actions: flip a tile and swap a tile (in whatever order you want).
Swap a tile means swapping a tile in your hand with a tile on the board. Its orientation (faceup or facedown) must stay the same.