The Depressing Game

The Depressing Game is a social deduction game, where players take on the role of high school students who have to deal with depression on a daily basis

This game was designed by the students of Nanakuli High School, located on the west coast of O'ahu, Hawaii.

While understanding the serious of the topic, this card game is light and humorous, and uses satire to explore the sensitive subject.

Gameplay summary:

You are high school students interacting on campus. The happy players are attempting to find out who is the depressed player and bring them around to the realm of sunshine. The depressed player is attempting to infect the other players with a contagion of woe.

A the beginning of the game platers are dealt a hidden role.

 If you are secretly playing a Happy Role (weirdo) the last round must be won by a Happy Card.
 If you are secretly playing the Depressed Role (I feel for you) the last round must be won by a Depressing Card DR the last round ends in a tie.

On a turn:

 Each player selects 1 card from their hand and places it face down ... (thinking about rainbows)
 All players then say "HAPPY!" and reveal their cards simultaneously.
 A player wins the round and furthers their secret agenda by having the highest numeric value of all cards played. Tied numbers cancel each other out. 

The player who plays the highest number wins the round. All tied numbers cancel out and count as zero.

The winner of the round selects 1 action (A or B)

a)Take a card from the Tableau of Emotions (cards in the center of the table). Now take a card from your hand and place that card face up in the Tableau of Emotions.

b)Take a card from the Tableau of Emotions(cards in the center of the table). Now take a random card from another player's hand and place that card face up in the Tableau of Emotions.

The winner will gather all the cards just played. place them together face-down in a "Discard pile" and place that pile aside. Place all played cards in the Discard pile from now on. No players may look at the discarded cards during the game.

Continue playing cards round after round until each player is down to their last card. This is the round that counts for the game.

All players play their last card face down. Before flipping over their last card, all players reveal their Hidden Role.

Players flip over their last cards following the same rules. Except the winning card's type (Happy or Depressed) determines the winner.

—description from the designer