Ghostbumpers

• Designers: Inka Brand, Markus Brand 
• Publisher: Deep Print Games
• Players: 3-6
• Age:8+
• Time: 15-20 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: 
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

The monsters are terrorizing the fairground. You dive into a crazy bumper-car ride and try not to lose your nerve. Who will be the first to get scared?

In this trick-taking game, you don’t want to win too many tricks, because each trick carries the risk that your character gets scared. The braver you play, the more points you can earn.

Before you start the game, you must first assemble the deck – removing a set of cards from 1 to 9 for each player less than the max count.  The deck has an equal number of 1-9, except for the 5 cards, and I believe there are three more 5s than the other values.  Finally, there is a single 0/10 card.  The remaining cards are shuffled and each player is dealt 9 cards for the round.  The rules recommend that you play a number of rounds so that all players can be the starting player the same number of times.

Once the hands are dealt out, players now examine their hand and try to decide where to place their scoring card.  Each player has a set of 6 plain score cards and a colorful target card.  The target card is placed anywhere on the deck – if at the very top, you are bidding that you will not take any tricks at all.  If it is the fourth card down, you are saying that you are going to take 3 tricks.  Each time you take a trick, you reveal the top card from your score stack.  You never want to reveal your colored scoring card during play, because if you do, this triggers the end of the round and you will score no points!

Once bids are made, the game moves into a trick-taking phase.  The starting player leads the first trick, and they can play any number of cards of identical rank.  If a single card is played, the value of that play is equal to the face value of said single card.  If you play a set of 2 or more cards of the same rank, now you have to do some math.  The number of cards that you play becomes the base value of your play and the rank of the cards is the decimal portion.   So, if you played 8-8-8, your play value would be 3.8.   Likewise, a play of 6-6 is equal to 2.6.  If a player plays multiple cards, they must draw one less card than they played from the deck to ensure that all players have the same number of cards in their hand for the next trick.

Once all players have played, the highest valued play wins the trick, and they must now flip over the top card of their scoring stack.  As long as this is one of the plain cards, the round continues.  Furthermore, for every 5 card that was in the trick, the winner must flip over an additional scoring card from their stack.  Again, as long as the colored target scoring card is not seen, the game continues.  The winner of the previous trick leads the next.

There is one exception – the 0/10 card (of which there is only one in the deck).  When this card is played, the player must immediately declare whether it is rank 0 or rank 10  (thus a guaranteed loser or a guaranteed winner).  If the trick contains the 0/10 card, then no scoring cards are flipped by the winner – neither for winning the trick nor for any 5s in the trick.

The hand will end in one of two ways – either someone flips over the top card of their scoring pile and reveals the colored scoring card OR the ninth and final trick is completed.    Whenever the hand ends, scoring occurs.  If someone triggered the end of the round by revealing their scoring card, they automatically score nothing for that round.  All other players now flip over cards from their scoring pile UNTIL they reveal their scoring card.

If the first card to be flipped this way is their target card, then they have perfectly predicted their score – and they are rewarded with 2VP for each card that remains in their stack.  In all other cases, you only score 1VP for each card that remains in the scoring stack.

Shuffle all the cards and repeat this process until everyone has had an equal number of turns as start player for the round (recommended 6 rounds total for 3p, 4 rounds total for 4p, etc).  The player with the most points wins.

My thoughts on the game

Ghostbumpers was sold to me as a trick taking game, but really I think it might be more of a scoring criteria management game.  I was honestly a bit disappointed in my first few hands of the game, but I think this is because I was expecting it to be something it wasn’t.

What I mean is that the hands often end quite early – in fact I have only played one hand of Ghostbumpers that has made it to the end of the nine tricks.  And the Trick-taking lover in me really had a problem with the hands not making it to its conclusion.  I wanted to be able to fully implement my plan on how many tricks I would take if the round were to go to completion.

However, with the large number of 5s in the deck as well as the interesting decimal rule – it is quite likely for people to win tricks unexpectedly, and also to have to show more cards than they were expecting to show.  Pretty much, anytime someone plays a single card 6 or higher or a set of X.6 or higher, it’s likely that they’re going to get a couple of 5s thrown onto the pile as punishment.

Thus, the focus of the game is less on the trick taking and more on simply the prediction of the scoring and when the scoring is going to happen.  Once Ghostbumpers is viewed in that light, it becomes a fascinating challenge as it turns out to be quite difficult to estimate when a hand is going to end!

The game definitely pays you to be aggressive, as you will double your points if you are able to place your scoring card in the exact spot for the end of the round – however, the penalty for being overaggressive is also harsh as you will score nothing if you reveal your scoring card first!  Until everyone has played a few rounds (and experiences the pain of extra 5s in their tricks), I think hands will definitely end earlier than you expect/want, but then once people learn the flow of the game, it becomes a lot more strategic.

Until your next appointment

The Gaming Doctor