Pyramid Review
Froop! Card Game
Published by Savant Garde Entertainment
Rules and Art by R. Hunter Gough
$17.95; 110 full-color cards (26 with instructions, 84 for play), 2-10 players
In some ways, gaming is a universal language: Once you get past the rules, the rest is mostly components. This goes double for a game that uses purely graphic mechanisms to facilitate play. Froop!, a colorful, symbol-based card game from Savant Garde Entertainment, is one such game.
The object of Froop! is to be the first to empty your hand of cards. Each card is split into four smaller rectangles, and each rectangle has one of the game's four standard, stylized pictures: hearts, smiley faces, bat's wings, or flowers. No two cards arrange the little graphics in the same way, and each card uses at least three of the four available symbols. Players start with a hand of seven cards, and another card is drawn from the top of the deck and placed in the center of the playing area to kick things off.
On his turn, a player must play a card from his hand so two or more of the symbols on that card overlap some part of the arrangement already in play in the middle of the table -- this collection is called the Froop. Cards must overlap side to side or end to end, but they all have to lay the same way; in other words, you can flip a card around 180 degrees to point in the opposite direction if it will get the pictures to fit one of these orientations, but you can't rotate . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: January 10, 2003
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