Foursquare

Story

Reddit user u/efofecks designed ten modern solo games which can all be played with just a standard card deck and shared them with the community in the attached PDF.

This page implements one of these games, Foursquare.

In the words of u/efofecks:

Rules

In Foursquare, you are the mayor of the fictional Flavortown, a trendy neighborhood known for being the birthplace of cutting-edge restaurants. New restaurants (cards) will be placed one at a time in a 4x4 grid. Placing the highest or lowest card in a row or column causes all other cards in that row or column to flip over, as other restaurants go out of business or try to challenge the newcomer. Your task is to end up with sixteen open restaurants in your city, while preventing too many from being closed at once.

Components

A standard 52-card deck, no jokers

Setup

Remove all the face cards from the game. Shuffle the remaining 40 number cards (restaurants) and hold this deck face down in your hand. Draw the top card of the deck and place it anywhere on the table to start your grid of restaurants.

Gameplay

Each turn, draw the top card of the deck and play it face up on the table. You may play the card either:
  1. As the first card of a new pile, vertically or horizontally adjacent to an existing pile, or
  2. On top of an existing card or pile of cards.
Your whole grid cannot grow to more than four cards in length, width, or height. This means you can have at most sixteen piles arranged in a 4x4 grid, with each pile having a maximum of four cards.

Flipping cards

After placing each card, look at the top cards of all the other piles on the same row, if any. Check if the card you just placed is the uniquely highest or lowest card in that row (In other words, it’s either higher or lower than all other cards in that row, or the only faceup card). If it is, this restaurant is too cool - flip over the top cards of all other piles in the same row. Other restaurants on the same street are forced to close down as they run out of customers. However, a lot of copycats also try to open in empty lots to ride the trend.

Aces have value 1. Ignore facedown cards when comparing values. Afterward, check the columns as well - if the card you just placed is the uniquely highest or lowest value in that column, flip the top cards of the other piles.

If after flipping cards in both rows and columns, your grid has more than four piles with facedown top cards (closed restaurants), the industry goes into recession and you lose the game.

Game End

Continue drawing and placing cards one at time. If after placing and flipping, you have a 4x4 grid of all face up restaurants, you win the game. Your score is the number of cards left in the deck. If you run out of cards to place, or you cannot place any card without violating any of the constraints on grid size or number of facedown cards, you lose.
[ Index page | Feedback ]