Cardslab: Countries

CardsLab Countries is an award winning game from Novabase Gameshifters 2016 gamification event held at Portugal. The game was launched at November 2017, after intensive testing with different kinds of audiences and revisions.

The pack consists of a deck with 75 cards (60 of countries with contents and stats, 12 special cards, a card with 60 country flags, 2 cards with shortened game rules), a rulebook and a world map. Each country card has the flag, location and capital, as well as stats like population, life expectancy or gdp. The game mechanics is "turn-based" and the goal is to get all the opponents' cards, which are initially distributed to everyone, forming a stack for each player (upside down).

Each turn consists of 4 phases. In the first phase, each player places 5 cards in his hand and can play special cards that change the course of the game, such as stealing the opponent's turn, double the winning prize, exchange all hand cards between 2 players or cancel any of these effects. In the next phase, the turn owner chooses a card from his hand, puts it upside down on the table and will have to decide between asking a question about the card to an opponent of his choice (flag/location/capital) or choose a statistic that will have to beat all opponents cards. For the latter, after the turn owner announces the statistic he chose, each opponent will have to pick a card from his hand and put it upside down on the table, to win the duel. This adds suspense, bluff and fun on each turn, forcing the player to carefully choose his plays. At the end of the turn, the winner receives as prize x cards from the opponents hands, depending on the special cards played, the duel type (question or statistic battle) and player count.

Many educational/general knowledge board games lack the fun and socialization offered by CardsLab. It's an 8-80 trivia & strategy game designed with a simple mechanics that can easily put 3 different generations playing at the same table. Also, without noticing, we are learning much faster than by reading a book.

CardsLab - Improving Knowledge Through Gamification.

—description from the publisher