Speculation

This is a game created for exprmt48, a game jam hosted by Aesthetician Labs. 

All you’ll need to play Speculation is a standard 52-card deck and a friend who also has a 52-card deck! This is a card game well suited to being geographically separated, since it can be played on a Discord or phone call easily!

Note that the initial setup is relatively long (3-5 minutes), but games can be played quickly and resetting the board between rounds is also quite fast.

Before setting up, note that if both players are in the same room, a barrier must be constructed to block each player’s board from the other’s view.

Setup

Each player will start by dividing their deck by color (red, black) and by type (value cards, face cards, joker). 

Red value cards	Red face cards	Red joker
Black value cards	Black face cards	Black joker

Each player then lays their black face cards, in ascending order with Joker high, in a row in front of them. This will be your personal board. 

Jack   Jack   Queen   Queen   King   King   Joker

Over top, or on the far side of the black row, lay your red face cards out in the same ascending order. This will be your record of your op`ponent’s board. If you’re familiar with the game Battleship, this should seem familiar. 

Next, each player shuffles their black value cards. From that shuffle, deal black value cards to each face card, per the following: 

Jacks	Queens	Kings	Joker
1 value card each	2 value cards each	3 value cards each	4 value cards

There will be 4 cards remaining, which can be set aside. 

The red value cards will be your “hand.” 

At the end of setup, each player should have a board that looks something like this.

Gameplay

The goal of the game is to guess the values beneath your opponent’s joker. But in order to do so, you must first guess the values beneath each of the lower value face cards standing in your way. 

The player with the most items of clothing on will be the first guesser. In the event of a tie, the person who can put on a new article of clothes first, wins, and guesses first. 

The first player will guess what value might be beneath one of their opponent’s face cards. Each guess can only contain one value. That might sound something like: 

*ahem* “Does either of your jacks have a 5 beneath it?”

The defending player must then answer yes or no. 

If no, nothing happens to either player’s board and the roles swap. 

If yes, the defender must flip that black 5 that was guessed from their hand over, face-down. That face card is now “down,” since all of it’s values have been called out. The guessing player puts a red 5 from their hand beneath one of the red jacks on their own board, helping them to track what has been successfully guessed. 

In the case that both of the defender’s jacks had 5s beneath them, they need not indicate that. A guess is only valid for one value, and in this example, each 5 is a separate value. The guesser would need to ask if the other jack had the other 5 in a separate turn. 

When a guessing player gets a correct guess, they get to take another consecutive turn and guess again. 

Face cards must downed in order of rank. So both jacks must be eliminated before the guesser can start guessing values under the queens, and so on. 

Once your opponent’s kings have both been downed, only the joker’s four values stand between you and victory. BUT WAIT!

Unlike previous turns, where values were guessed one at a time, you will guess all four of the joker’s values, each turn. You must get all four values correct in a single guess in order to win. 

If you are the defender, and your joker is at stake, the rules also change for you. Instead of answering “yes” or “no” to whether the values guessed are correct, you tell the guesser how many of their guessed values are correct. 

This might sound like…

Guesser: “Does your joker have a 4, 7, 9, and 2?”

Defender: “Only 2 of those are right.”

The first player to guess all four of their opponents’ joker’s values correctly wins!