played for you

Fram R’lyeh

win treasures or turn cultist

In the ruins of a sleeping city at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean treasures wait to be salvaged. You try to outbid others with power cards to take possession of treasures.

Each player holds a set of power cards and a randomly drawn joker with varying effects; the treasure cards show one of three depth of the ocean and also points for treasure value.

A display and draw pile of treasure card is prepared and in twelve rounds you play for one treasure in each rounds. The starting player checks the top treasure card and plays an open-faced power car, all other players play one face-down power-card; with the highest power-card you win the treasure and may look at it. The winner of the auction is the starting player of the round. In the last round all players see the treasure card before the auction. Power cards played in an auction are turned over into insanity cards and – if necessary – stacked upon others of previous rounds, each such card has a value of -1.

If you win a treasure, you can put the treasure face-down on your stack of insanity cards and thus neutralize them. Your power-card that won the treasure is not turned over and scores its value of negative points. If, after twelve rounds, you have a negative total, you are turning into a cultist of the Great Old One. In case that all players have become cultists, you win with most negative points.

Despite the Cthulhu topic, Fran R’lyeh is a pure auction game with one bid per layer and treasure, so that you need luck in drawing cards in hand and maybe a bit of bluff. The game works well using standard mechanisms, and is probably of most interest to collectors of Japanese games.

Players: 3-5

Age: 12+

Time: 20+

Designer: rerasiu

Artist: BakaFire, Gun_zi

Price: ca. 14 Euro

Publisher: BakaFire Party / MinimalGames 2015

Web: http://japonbrand.myshopify.com

Genre: Cards, auction

Users: With friends

Version: multi

Rules: en jp

In-game text: no

Comments:

Pure auction game

Topic not essential, works with any topic

Good, albeit bleak graphics

Compares to:

All auction games with one bid per item

Other editions:

Currently none

Chance (pink): 0

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 2

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 3

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0