Noot-noot! Players quickly assume the role of a playful penguin and try to build a tall pyramid of ice blocks and penguins. As we all know, penguins are particularly mischievous and impatient animals and don’t want to share the honour of building the pyramid with other penguins. Make sure your opponents can’t finish building the pyramid in Penguin Party!
Penguin Party is a classic and funny card game by Reiner Knizia in which Penguins and penalty points get to play the main part. This cheerfully illustrated edition is published by Playte. In Penguin Party, players build a ‘pyramid’ by placing penguin cards on the table. All players are dealt an equal number of cards. These cards in different colours are distributed randomly. Players try to get rid of their hand of cards without being eliminated. How are players eliminated? If a player cannot play a card during his or her turn, that player is eliminated and receives penalty points. The player who has the fewest penalty points at the end of all rounds – there are as many rounds as players – wins Penguin Party!
During a turn, a player plays a card from his or her hand. A card may be placed at the bottom of the pyramid. The bottom of the pyramid may be up to eight cards wide in the regular game or seven cards wide in the two-player variant. A player can also place a card at a higher level of the pyramid, as long as this card is placed on top of two other penguin cards of which at least one is the same colour as the card played.
If you cannot play a card, place your hand cards face-up on the table and take as many penalty points as the number of cards you did not manage to play. If you managed to play empty your hand, you may return two previously collected penalty points to the supply. Penguin Party’s strategy is to play with the dealt luck and deduce which colours your opponents may still have in their hand. Make sure you play the right colours, giving opponents no chance to play out their cards!
Penguin Party contains many elements of a typical Reiner Knizia card game: a healthy dose of luck, a short playing time and chips to indicate penalty points. Penguin Party is a short and fun game that can be played easily and quickly with large and smaller groups without too many more complex rules and difficult decisions. This makes Penguin Party perfect for fans of similar Knizia games such as L.A.M.A.
