Rise Up

Rise Up is a single player card game using a standard playing deck. It's inspired by roguelikes. You stake cards in your posession (abilities) against cards that are laied out in front of you trying to find the ace in the layout. I designed it for the bi-weekly constraints challenges we did over at Bromberry Games (please check it out here).

I recommend the video where I show the setup and explain the rules, just so you can imagine what it looks like while reading these rules. However, I have changed it a bit so this page will always be the most current version.

Setup (for the first stage):

1. Remove all jokers and Aces from your deck
2. Shuffle your deck and draw 17 cards.
   
3. Add a random Ace to the 17 cards and shuffle the pile.
4. Then place the cards face down in a 3x3 grid, these are the "rooms". The first row has one card per room, the second row two cards, and the third should have three cards per room.
5. Now draw three cards and put them face up anywhere you find convenient: these are your "abilities."
   1. Do this only on the very first setup: add a random ace to your abilities.

Goal:

• Win rooms by clearing them with your ability cards.
• Win stages by finding the ace in one of the rooms. 
• Win the game by collecting all the aces.

How to play:

• Clearing a room: You move into rooms by investing  of one or more of your ability cards to beat them. You succeed if the combined value of your cards is equal or higher than the cards in the room. Repeat until you either lose (have less strength than cards in a room) or until you collect the ace.
• Clearing a stage: When you gain the ace, you repeat the setup process for the next stage. However, this time you add an additional card to each room. That is, after shuffling the deck, you draw 26 cards in the second, and 35 in the third stage. Furthermore, you add an additional ability card when starting the stage. So, you start with 4 in the second stage and 5 in the third stage.
• Clearing the game: When you successfully collected all 4 aces, you have cleared the game. Congratulations.

Ability Cards:
The number and suit on your ability cards are independent. This means that if you have, for example, the 5 of hearts, its strength is 5, and its ability is hearts. Cards in rooms do not have abilities, they only count as the number on the card.

• HEARTS = let's you draw a card from the deck.
• DIAMONDS = let's you reveal a face down card.
• SPADES = let's you remove a card from play. 
• CLUBS = always counts as +1 strength when it's in your abilities.

You can use a suit's ability only once per card. To use a suit's ability you must rotate it to show that you have used it (except clubs). However, once you use an ability it loses 1 strength. For example, 5 of hearts, would now count as a 4.

Rules:

• The strength of the cards goes from Ace (1) to King (13).
• You must decide before moving into a room how many and which cards you are "investing."
• If you beat a room, you lose the cards you invested and receive the cards that were in the room. 
• When you clear a stage you receive the ace as a special ability. The ace doubles the effect of its ability. This means that any hearts ability let's you draw two cards, any clubs card gives +2, spades removes 2, and diamonds reveals 2.

Failure:

• The room you moved into has a strength higher than yours.
• You removed the Ace with the spade ability.