Egocentric World (2020)

Overview

In a dystopian world plagued by worldwide crisis, nations are remains from the past. Nowadays, megacities locked in endless competition have to avoid the pitfalls of their own egocentrism...

Each player controls a city, represented by her hand of cards. Each card has an Egocentrism value and higher-valued cards also have special abilities.

The goal of each player is to finish the game with the lowest Egocentrism score. One game can be composed of one or several rounds. Rounds play quickly.

Shuffle the 60 cards, form a deck, and initiate a discard pile. Distribute 5 cards to each player to compose her hand.

A card put into the discard pile is simply discarded when it came straight from the deck, but is played when it came from the hand of a player. A played card can trigger its special ability while a discarded card cannot.

During your turn, you must complete one of the following actions:

- Draw and either discard OR keep the card so it replaces one from your hand. The replaced card would then be played. - Take the first card from the discard pile so it replaces one card from your hand. The replaced card is then played. - Reveal a pair of equal-valued cards and play one. - Say “STOP” so the round will end just before your next turn starts.

The round also ends immediately if a player has no more cards in hand.

The game is therefore a race for the lowest score. The tricky part is that each player has the power to abruptly trigger the end of the round as a regular action on her turn. She must however be careful because other players might have lower scores than hers.