I had a weekend break in Zurich to meet up with a friend who works there. We often play board games when we meet, so I brought Hanabi and FUSE (very compact games, suitable for travelling – especially since I almost always travel HLO) but my friend was thinking of getting something different. We thus headed down to a game shop, and picked up The Game: Extreme (Board Game Geek).
The rules are fairly simple. There is a deck of 98 cards – one copy each of the integers from 2 to 99, inclusive. Players will have some number of cards in their hand (eight for a solo game, seven for 2 players), and play them to the table; the game ends in a loss if a player must play, but is unable to (or if all cards are played, which is a win). It is a cooperative game; players all win or lose together. The rulebook also mentions a half-win if players finish with ten cards or fewer remaining.
There are four communal piles that players can play cards to. On two of these, cards played should be numerically increasing; on the other two, they should be numerically decreasing. However, one may also go against the direction of a pile – this can only be done if the jump is exactly 10. Thus, for example, if an increasing pile has a 57 on top, one may play a 59 (increasing) or a 47 (ten less), but may not play a 49 (not increasing, and not ten less). Of course, if a player has both the 59 and 49, the player may play the 59, after which the 49 becomes legal.
One can probably write some search-based algorithm to figure out what the best possible outcome is for a given hand and individual pile, or even set of piles given some fitness function. There’s also a straightforward dynamic programming optimisation, and for certain classes of fitness functions there might be better principles one can leverage.
Players must typically play two cards on their turn, though they may play more (for example, if they have a chain of cards that involves several reverse jumps) while there are still cards in the deck; once that is emptied, they only need to play one. Once they have played all of their cards, they draw back to their hand size and play passes to the next player.
The Extreme version adds special effects to some of the number cards. These may either restrict the current player’s turn (requiring that they stop immediately, play exactly three cards, or immediately cover up the card that was played) or affect all players while they are exposed (requiring players keep quiet, play all the cards in their turn to the same pile, not do reverse jumps or only draw 1 card at the end of their turn). Apart from the stop card, all of these make the rules for playing more restrictive (and thus I’d say this is somewhat harder than the base game).
The solo game doesn’t generally seem too difficult as one can plan and execute sequences of reverse jumps without interference from others. The keep-quiet special effect no longer really matters, and the stop cards actually become positive as they allow for drawing cards back up earlier. I’m not sure how one might formulate an algorithm for determining optimal moves, but I can generally see the following principles:
- Play the minimum number of cards needed per turn, and then draw back up. This lets you see more options, which is useful. Normally in a multiplayer game you may want to play more than the minimum to ensure that no one interferes with your plan, but in single player no one will anyway.
- Plan and aggressively use reverse jumps. These often get thwarted in multiplayer games (you might draw a card that allows a reverse jump, but someone might need to play on the relevant pile before it gets to your turn).
Playing with more than one player gets trickier, as communication between players is permitted but precise numerical information is not. I would say things that imply precise numerical information (e.g. “I can jump this pile”) are also bad. There are edge cases which are probably acceptable (e.g. “it makes no difference to me; which of these would you prefer I play to?” with an up-65 and down-67 suggesting I hold the 66). Still, talk of “small/large jumps” and actively saying “stop” after interesting cards are played is very useful.
Cooperating well involves looking ahead to other players’ turns as well; it’s not always optimal to, on each player’s turn, individually minimise “damage” to the piles. There have been times where being forced to jump a pile by 30 or so, I’ve encouraged my teammate to play more cards there since it would be destroyed on my turn anyway. We only played with two players, but I imagine the dynamics get more interesting with larger groups.
The Game: Extreme is a very light game; while there is some minor logic involved it’s not particularly complex. It’s fairly fun and witnessing successful chains can be enjoyable; the special effect cards can also cause annoying obstacles (while blocking reverse jumps is probably the most damaging, the keep-quiet one is interesting as it changes the game for a while). It’s certainly a fun thing to play while passing time and discussing other things, and hard enough to provide a good challenge without being frustrating.
