A Elegia do Pássaro da Morte

A Elegia do Pássaro da Morte (The Elegy of the Bird of Death) is an eleven card microgame. 6 double-sided cards contain verses of a poem, 4 are identity cards, and the last one is the death card.

The verse cards are shuffled and laid out in a column, forming a poem. Each player receives a character card. The poem tells about the characters' death, and the goal of the game is to manipulate the poem and escape death 4 times.

Each character card shows four combinations of verse card symbols, one combinatino on each side. Whenever each of these appears in the poem, all turned to the red card side, the player has escaped once, and then they turn their character card by 90 degrees to achieve the next sequence.

On a turn, can do three actions: they may move one of the last two poem cards to the first position in the poem, or flip the first card of the poem to the other side (which results in certain other cards to be flipped as well), or escape death by having the three necessary cards flipped to the red side.

The first player to escape death four times is the winner - everybody else dies.

The game is based on the novel O Réquiem do Pássaro da Morte by Andrio Santos. Although the poem is in Portuguese, the game itself is language independent.