Gameplay
Players take turns to choose a card and then play it. The game ends when one player cries out It's Alive! after collecting the eight body parts needed to bring their monster to life.
First a player must choose a card by either:
- Turning over the top card of the deck, for free;
- or, buying the top card out of a player's discard pile (known as their graveyard). In the third edition, the player simply buys the card to their stockpile directly out of a discard pile for one and a half times its face value and ends their turn.
Once a card has been chosen players then have three options:
- Buy that card at its face value, by paying money from their stockpile of cash to the bank;
- Sell that card to the bank, adding it to the top of their graveyard and taking half the value of the card from the bank;
- Or auction it to the other players, saying what they are prepared to pay, and giving each player one chance to out-bid them.
In addition, there are two special cards: the coffin, which is treated like a wild card, and can be used instead of any body part card, and a villagers' uprising which represents irate villagers who need to be appeased by paying them off. Duplicate cards and bought-off villagers can be used to pay for other villagers or to buy cards out of a discard pile.
Strategy
Strategically, It's Alive! requires the players to manage their limited funds to get as many body parts as possible while denying their opponents cheap access to body parts that they need. Because buying an auctioned part from another player provides them with income, paying over the face value leads to another player gaining more benefit than the purchaser.
Since a player can only gain funds during their turn (by selling or auctioning a card), spending money during your turn can be a dangerous tactic, potentially leaving you unable to take part in auctions until your next turn.
Also, players need to be aware that drawing the villagers' uprising can be very expensive if provisions haven't been made to meet their price.
Canasta is a card game of the rummy family of games believed to be a variant of 500 Rum. Although many variations exist for two, three, five or six players, it is most commonly played by four in two partnerships with two standard decks of cards. Players attempt to make melds of seven cards of the same rank and "go out" by playing all cards in their hands. It is "the most recent card game to have achieved worldwide status as a classic".
Uno, stylized as UNO, is a proprietary American shedding-type card game originally developed in 1971 by Merle Robbins in Reading, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati, that housed International Games Inc., a gaming company acquired by Mattel on January 23, 1992.
Crazy Eights is a shedding-type card game for two to seven players and the best known American member of the Eights Group which also includes Pig and Spoons. The object of the game is to be the first player to discard all of their cards. The game is similar to Switch and Mau Mau.
500 rum, also called pinochle rummy, Michigan rummy, Persian rummy, rummy 500 or 500 rummy, is a popular variant of rummy. The game of canasta and several other games are believed to have developed from this popular form of rummy. The distinctive feature of 500 rum is that each player scores the value of the sets or cards they meld. It may be played by 2 to 8 players, but it is best for 3 to 5.
Spite and malice, also known as cat and mouse, is a relatively modern American card game for two or more players. It is a reworking of the late 19th century Continental game crapette, also known as Russian bank, and is a form of competitive solitaire, with a number of variations that can be played with two or three regular decks of cards.
Rummy is a group of games related by the feature of matching cards of the same rank or sequence and same suit. The basic goal in any form of rummy is to build melds which can be either sets or runs and either be first to go out or to amass more points than the opposition.
Bang! is a Spaghetti Western-themed social deduction card game designed by Emiliano Sciarra and released by Italian publisher DV Giochi in 2002. In 2004, Bang! won the Origins Award for Best Traditional Card Game of 2003 and Best Graphic Design of a Card Game or Expansion.
Alhambra is a 2003 tile-based German-style board game designed by Dirk Henn. It was originally published in Germany by Queen Games in a language-interdependent version; an English-specific version was released in North America by the now-defunct Überplay. The game is a Muslim-themed update, set during the construction of the Alhambra palace in 14th century Granada, of the 1998 stock trading board game Stimmt So!, which in turn was an update of the 1992 mafia influence board game Al Capone; the original version was subsequently released as Alhambra: The Card Game. Upon its release, Alhambra won numerous awards, including the Spiel des Jahres award. Its success has led to the release of numerous expansion packs and spin-off games, and is becoming Queen Games' flagship franchise.
Tonk, or tunk, is a matching card game, which combines features of knock rummy and conquian. Tonk is a relatively fast-paced game that can be played by 2-4 players. It can be played for just points or for money wagered.
Monopoly: The Card Game is loosely based on the board game Monopoly. The idea is to draw, trade and organize cards into "color-groups" along with bonus cards. Players take turns drawing and discarding cards until one completes a hand. The value of each player's hand is then counted and they receive the amount of Monopoly money they have earned. The first person to collect $10,000 wins.
Liverpool rummy is a multi-player, multi-round card game similar to other variants of rummy that adds features like buying and going out. It is played the same as Contract rummy, except that if a player manages to cut the exact number of cards required to deal the hand and leave a face-up card, then the cutting player's score is reduced by 50 points.
Phase 10 is a card game created in 1982 by Kenneth Johnson and sold by Mattel, which purchased the rights from Fundex Games in 2010. Phase 10 is based on a variant of rummy known as contract rummy. It consists of a special deck equivalent to two regular decks of cards, and can be played by two to six people. The game is named after the ten phases that a player must advance through in order to win. Many people shorten the game by aligning it to baseball rules and consider 5.5 phases to be a complete game when running out of time to complete the full ten phases. Whoever is in the lead when play stops if someone has completed 5.5 phases or more is the winner.
Rumino is a knock rummy card game of Italian origin for up to six people, in which players try to form sets or sequences of cards. It may possibly have been devised in America during the 1940s by Italian immigrants by adapting the game Scala Quaranta to Gin rummy. It is usually played for small stakes Two 52-card decks are used plus four Jokers comprising 108 cards.
Bing rummy is a variant of kalooki invented in the mining towns of Alaska. The game can be played with 2 to 8 players but works best with 3 to 6 players. It is unknown how the game came to be called “bing” although it may be because of the mining terms: unit of weight equal to 800 pounds, or a pile of rich lead ore. It is probably the second definition that gives the game its name referring to the pile of coins that accumulate throughout the game; especially as it is the Galena lead mines that popularized the term “bing ore”. These mines opened in 1919 about the time the game was developed.
Continental Rummy is a progressive partnership Rummy card game related to Rumino. It is considered the forerunner of the whole family of rummy games using two packs of cards as one. Its name derives from the fact that it is played throughout the continental Europe, the United States, Mexico, Canada, and also in South America. According to Albert Morehead, it was "at one time the most popular form of Rummy in women's afternoon games, until in 1950 it lost out to Canasta."
Ninety-nine is a simple card game based on addition and reportedly popular among the Romani people. It uses one or more standard decks of Anglo-American playing cards in which certain ranks have special properties, and can be played by any number of players. During the game, the value of each card played is added to a running total which is not allowed to exceed 99. A player who cannot play without causing this total to surpass 99 loses that hand and must forfeit one token.
Dominion is a card game created by Donald X. Vaccarino and published by Rio Grande Games. Originally published in 2008, it was the first deck-building game, and inspired a genre of games building on its central mechanic. Each player begins with a small deck of cards, which they improve by purchasing cards from a common supply that varies from game to game. Cards can help the player's deck function, impede their opponents, or provide victory points. As of December 2022, fifteen expansions to the original Dominion have been released.
The following is a glossary of terms used in card games. Besides the terms listed here, there are thousands of common and uncommon slang terms. Terms in this glossary should not be game-specific, but apply to a wide range of card games played with non-proprietary packs. It should not include terms solely related to casino or banking games. For glossaries that relate primarily to one game or family of similar games, see Game-specific glossaries.
Cabo is a 2010 card game by Melissa Limes and Mandy Henning that involves memory and manipulation based on the classic Golf card game and similar to Rat-a-Tat Cat (1995). The game uses a dedicated deck of cards with each suit numbered from 0 to 13, and certain numbers being marked as "Peek", "Spy" or "Swap". The objective of the game is for each player to minimize the sum of their own cards, four of which are played face-down to the table at the start of a round. Face-down cards may be revealed and swapped by card effects.
Viennese Rummy is a matching card game of the Rummy family for 2-6 people played in continental Europe.
