Greenstone Games sent me a copy of their game Seven, the Card Game to review. Actually, they sent me two copies.

Seven is simply described as Go Fish+. It uses the mechanics of Go Fish as a base, changes them slightly and adds special cards into the mix. When I described the game as such to the designer and publisher, he received it politely but I could tell that he was annoyed. I don’t really understand why. It’s not like this isn’t obvious from the very moment that you read the rules and throughout the entire play of the game.

The cards are somewhat flimsy, which I’ve come to expect as a general rule from new publishers (though many spring for more substantial card stock). The artwork is amateurish; however the designer indicates that they have another artist lined up for another edition.

The Game

The deck contains seven sets of seven different cards, and twenty-one special cards (which include some duplicates). On your turn, if you have one of the items in one of the sets, you may ask any other player for one of the other items in that set. If he or she has it, he or she gives it to you, and you get to go again. If not, you have to go fish pick a card and play passes to the left.

(See?)

Once per turn you may play a special card if you have one, which give you various benefits, such as looking through the deck for a card, or through someone else’s hand, or additional chances to guess wrong. “Joker” cards you play on another player’s turn and let you lie about a card when asked and end that player’s turn.

And that’s it. Game ends when the sets are all collected, and the player with the most sets wins.

Impressions

I’m not a fan of Go Fish. Taking that into account, the game is roughly on par with the experience you would get playing Go Fish.

In Go Fish, when you call a card from a set, you get all the cards from the other player that he or she has in the set; you don’t have to guess which one they have. This prevents that player from simply asking you right back for each and every card that you took from them on their turn, something that happened dozens of times during our game. The other people I played with actually found this very amusing, and so, if you’re into that kind of light-hearted back and forth silliness, you may find this enjoyable.

The special cards are decent, though if one player gets an unequal share of the better ones they’ll have an advantage, naturally. They were distributed equally enough in our game so that that wasn’t a factor. The designer indicates that they are tweaking the special cards for the next edition.

Contest

I can’t really end without mentioning their contest. They got a babe to lie down and cover herself in nothing but cards for a contest wherein you have to guess how many cards are in the picture. What can I say? I’m only human.