Heck: A Tiny Card Game

Heck is a tiny game with a simple hook: you are a lonely snake trying to make friends with critters. Each round you get a secret snake card with three attributes — hiss, slither length and chomp — and you bid eggs behind a screen on which of them you are backing.

Everyone reveals at once. Bid the most on the right attribute and the critter becomes your friend.

Setup

1. Give each player a tiny screen and 3 green eggs. Any spare eggs go back in the box.
2. Place the 3 brown eggs in the middle.
3. Shuffle the critter deck, the heck deck and the snake deck into three separate draw piles.
4. Draw 3 critter cards face up. These are the active critters everyone is competing for.

How a Round Works

At the start of every round, draw a new snake card and place it face up behind your screen. Keep it secret — the whole game is that nobody knows how good your snake actually is.

Each round then plays out in two phases.

1. Betting phase

Look at the three face-up critters. Each is impressed by one or more traits. Place your egg tokens on your snake card in any combination of:

• an attribute — hiss, slither length or chomp
• the heck space
• or play it safe, by placing all your eggs in the middle of your snake card

2. Reveal phase

Everyone lifts their screens at once. Resolve in this order:

Played it safe? Take a brown egg now, giving you an extra egg to bid with going forward.

Bet on the heck space? Starting with whoever bet the most, draw one heck card for each egg you bet there. Resolve heck cards immediately unless the card tells you to hold on to it.

If players tie on heck bets, the player with the fewest critter friends draws first.

Winning critters. If you placed the most eggs on hiss, slither length or chomp, you win the active critter showing that same attribute.

Two things to watch:

• If the attribute on the critter shows a number, you must have bet at least that many eggs to win it.
• If two players tie for the most eggs on an attribute, nobody gets that critter — it stays on the table for next round.

Some critters show only a heck symbol. Those cannot be bid on at all and can only be won by drawing the matching friendship heck card.

Display the critters you win face up in front of you, where everyone can see them.

End of the round

Refill the active critters back up to three, then everyone discards their snake and draws a new one.

How to Win

You win the moment you have either:

• 5 critter friends, or
• a clique — 3 critter friends who speak the same nonsense word (bleep, flip or block).

For a longer game, play to 7 critter friends or a clique of 4.

Common Mistakes

• Ignoring minimum bids. A number printed on a critter’s attribute is a threshold. Winning the bid with fewer eggs than that wins you nothing.
• Expecting ties to be broken. A tie on an attribute means the critter stays put. Only heck-card draws have a tiebreaker.
• Forgetting to resolve heck cards straight away. They resolve on the spot unless the card explicitly says to keep it.
• Bidding on heck-only critters. Those can only be won through the heck deck’s friendship card.
• Overlooking the clique. Three critters sharing a nonsense word ends the game just as surely as five friends does — including for your opponents, so watch what they are collecting.
• Showing your snake. Your snake card stays behind the screen until the reveal. It is the only hidden information in the game.