Spicy.

Spicy is a bluffing party game that came out in 2020, the first English-language release from Hungarian designer Gy?ri Zoltán Gábor, released last July by HeidelBÄR and probably something I would have seen at Gen Con had the normal convention season taken place.

Spicy plays 2 to 6 players, although I think it needs at least 3 to work well. The deck has 100 cards in it, ninety of which have a number from 1 to 10 and a color/spice – red (chili), green (wasabi), or blue (pepper). There are five wild cards that can be any number from 1 to 10 but have no color, and five color wilds that have no number. Each player begins the game with six cards from the shuffled deck.

The start player must begin a new pile in the center of the table by playing any card with value 1 to 3, stating the card’s value and color when they place it face-down on the table. Play goes around the table, and each player must then play a higher-valued card in the same color, until someone plays a 10 card in that color, after which the next player must play a 1, 2, or 3 card to keep the pile going. A player can pass and draw a card rather than playing.

Because all of the cards are played face-down, however, you can bluff, lying about number or color or both. If nobody challenges the play, it stands. Any other player can challenge it, though, placing a hand on the pile and saying whether they’re challenging the declared number or color. If the challenge succeeds, the challenger takes the pile and the challenge loser draws two cards and must start a new pile. If the challenge fails, the challenger draws the two cards while the player who placed the card wins the pile. Wild cards win any challenge for their shown variable and lose any challenge for the one they don’t show.

There are also three 10-point trophy cards you can win during the game. If you play the last card in your hand and it’s not challenged, or if it’s challenged and you win the challenge, you take a trophy card. If any player gets two trophy cards, they win the game immediately. Otherwise, the game continues until either all three trophies have been claimed, or until someone draws the World’s End card that’s placed about ¾ of the way down the deck when the game begins. Players then get one point for each card they’ve gained in piles from challenges won, and add 10 points for each trophy card. Whoever has the most points wins.

This is a bluffing game, and as such, it’s only fun when players lie – a lot, preferably. If everyone just tells the truth, and then draws cards when they don’t have a legal (true) play, the game is going to be boring. You have to go for it, and have a good poker face, and recognize that people probably aren’t going to challenge every single time – and the bigger the pile, the less someone will want to challenge and potentially hand an opponent a large stack of points.

There’s an advanced mode, where you randomly add one of the “Spice It Up!” cards that add or change something in the rules, such as letting you change the color of the stack to red if you play a 1, 2, or 3; or where playing a 5 lets you add two cards to the pile and draw two new cards to your hand. I don’t think these add a whole lot to the game, but your mileage may vary. This game is a ton of fun if you get into the spirit of it, so if you get the right group – and, although I haven’t tried this yet, I imagine if you get the right drinks on the table – it’s absolutely worth getting, especially at $15. I don’t think it works with 2 people, and if your group doesn’t bluff well or like games of deceit, you might not like it as I did.