SUPERHOT: The Card Game
SUPERHOT: The Card Game Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Components
- 12 Bullet Cards
- 27 Obstacle Cards
- 25 Goal Cards
- 8 Player 1 starting cards
- 8 Player 2 starting cards
- 3 Goal Progress Tokens
- 1 Help Card
- 1 System Card
About the Game
SUPERHOT The Card Game is a micro deckbuilding game where you fight in four dimensions. The fourth dimension is time. The more cards you play, the faster time advances, so be careful.
Your goal in SUPERHOT The Card Game is to beat three levels of increasing difficulty!
Types of Cards
There are three types of cards in SUPERHOT The Card Game: Goals, Obstacles and Bullets.
Goal Cards
Goal Cards define your goal (or goals) for the current level. A full single-player campaign is composed of three levels of increasing difficulty:
- Level 1: 1 Goal Card
- Level 2: 2 Goal Cards
- Level 3: 3 Goal Cards
Goal Progress Tokens will be necessary to keep track of some Goal Cards.
When a Level has multiple goals, you can keep track of all of them and you can fulfill them in any order you want. When you complete one of them, flip the card face down.
Obstacle Cards
Obstacle Cards have two parts. The bottom part represents the Obstacle you're facing and the top part is what you get if you destroy it.
Obstacle Cards can represent Enemies, Locations, and Objects.
When the Obstacle Card is in The Line (see the Solo Setup section), it's an Obstacle and you need to watch out for its ability. When it's in your hand, you can use what's in the top part. The card can provide you with either an ability, or one of the two skill values (Fighting or Dodge).
You interact with Obstacles by playing cards from your hand to reach (or exceed) the skill values indicated on the Obstacle's bottom part. When you play a card, place it into the Used Cards Area.
Obstacle skill values will show Fighting, Dodge, or Mixed symbols. When you interact with an Obstacle, you get to choose if you want to Destroy or Knock out:
- Destroy: Take the Obstacle Card out of The Line and add it to the New Cards Area (see the Solo Setup section). They'll go into your hand at the end of the turn, so this is a good way to get some new weapons or moves that you know, or think you'll need next turn.
- Knock out: Turn the Obstacle Card face down and leave it where it was in The Line. Abilities of face down cards cannot be triggered, and when they leave The Line, they go to the Obstacles Discard instead of your hand or your Player Discard. This is a good way to stop enemies and avoid unwanted cards.
Your starting deck is composed of Obstacle Cards as well, identified by a symbol in the top right corner.
Bullet Cards
Bullets are dangerous! As the enemies shoot at you, Bullet Cards will start to appear in The Line. If you don't block them quickly enough, they'll end up in your hand. You can't use a Bullet Card from your hand, so they're taking up valuable room there! Additionally, if you're holding 4 of them, you lose instantly!
Bullet Cards in The Line are considered "flying bullets", and you can Destroy them by playing Obstacle Cards and reaching the skill value shown in the lower right corner. Any bullet dodged this way, or slashed with a Katana (see Player Abilities), is placed on the top of the Bullets Deck.
Solo Setup
The solo rules are the core of this game. The setup and turn structure described below is similar for the other modes of play, which are explained later in the rulebook.
- Group all the Bullet Cards and place them face up to form a Bullets Deck.
- Shuffle all the Obstacle Cards and place 6 of them face up next to each other, forming The Line.
- Place the remaining Obstacle Cards face up as the Obstacles Deck to the left of The Line.
- Take 9 cards from the bottom of the Obstacles Deck. Add a Bullet Card to those cards and shuffle them. Place these 10 cards back under the Obstacles Deck.
- Shuffle all the cards with the starting-deck symbol and put them face down on your left below The Line. This is your starting Player Deck. Now draw 4 cards from your Player Deck. This is your starting hand.
- The Line: The Line represents what you can see as you move through the current level. The enemies see you too, and they'll shoot you if you're not careful. The Obstacle Cards are drawn from the Obstacles Deck and will get moved from left to right until they are destroyed or they are moved to one of the Discards. The Line is refilled back up to 6 cards at the end of each turn.
- Time moves only when you do: At the end of the turn, The Line scrolls depending on how many cards you used during your turn. For example, if you used 3 cards during the turn, you need to empty the cards from the rightmost 3 slots. Those slots will be emptied, whether there currently was a card there or not. This represents you moving past the Obstacles, and the cards that are removed from The Line go to one of the Discards.
- The Obstacles Discard and Player Discard are empty at the beginning of the game, but remember to save a spot for them on the table.
- Leave some place below The Line and next to your Player Deck for a New Cards Area and Used Cards Area.
- Shuffle the Goal Cards and set them aside; this is the Goals Deck. Draw 1 Goal Card from it and place it above The Line.
- You may choose to veto that Goal Card. It doesn't disappear though! If you choose to veto, draw a new Goal Card and place the one you just vetoed on top of the Goals Deck. It will be one of the goals for the next level. Choose wisely, and keep in mind you won't be able to veto that Goal Card again on the next level!
- If you draw any Goal Card that would be automatically completed right away at this moment, place it on the bottom of the Goal Deck and draw another one in its place.
The setup lays out, left to right, top to bottom: the Bullets Deck (upper right), the current Goal above The Line, The Line itself (6 face-up Obstacle Cards), the Obstacles Discard (upper right, below the Bullets Deck), the Obstacles Deck (left of The Line), the Player Discard, Player Deck, New Cards Area and Used Cards Area (below The Line), and the Player hand (right side).
The Aim of the Game
Your objective is to complete a sequence of 3 levels. To do so, you will need to upgrade your hand and deck by adding new weapons and skills while fighting enemies in The Line.
How to Play
On every level that you will be trying to complete, you will take a series of turns, each divided into 7 phases. Depending on your choice in the first phase, you will either resolve only 3 of those 7 phases, or all of them.
At the beginning of every turn check the cards in your hand and the Obstacles in The Line and then decide what to do.
1 | Wait or Move?
In this phase, you have two choices.
- Wait: You may discard as many cards as you like from your hand. These cards go into the Obstacles Discard. You can't discard Bullet Cards this way. Then take the Obstacle from the start of The Line (the one on the right, next to the Obstacles Discard) and put it into your Player Discard. After you have done all that, move straight to phase 6 (Obstacle Abilities).
- Move: If everything looks good, you can choose to simply move to phase 2 (Use cards).
2 | Use Cards
During this phase you will use the cards in your hand to deal with the Obstacles on The Line. Some cards will give you skill values, while others will give you useful abilities. To deal with an Obstacle, you need to play cards to reach or exceed the value indicated in the bottom right of the Obstacle Card. During this phase you may interact with more than one Obstacle, if you are able to of course.
The top card of the Obstacles deck does not count as part of The Line. It represents something you can see from far away, but you can't interact with this card right now and its ability won't be activated during this turn.
You can use multiple cards to interact with the same Obstacle, but you can't split the value on a single card between multiple Obstacles. You can exceed the value you need, but you cannot use more cards than are needed, so you can't add extra cards just to get rid of them from your hand.
For example: You can use the following two cards, 1 + 1, to interact with an Obstacle that needs 2. But you can't use 1 + 3 to interact with the same Obstacle just because the total value is 4 Fighting and you only needed 2. So the single 3 card is enough for that Obstacle (and the remaining 1 Fighting is unnecessary). Add up the total value that you're spending to see which cards are not needed.
Reaching the skill value of a card: You can use any combination of cards in your hand to interact with Obstacles in The Line. There are 3 types of requirements to interact with a card:
- When an Obstacle shows the Fighting symbol, you must use cards that provide Fighting to interact with it.
- When an Obstacle shows the Dodge symbol, you must use cards that provide Dodge to interact with it.
- When an Obstacle shows the Mixed symbol, you can use any combination of Fighting and Dodge. This means they can all be Fighting, all Dodge, or a combination of the two.
Don't forget! When you are interacting with Obstacles in The Line, you get to choose whether you are Destroying them or just Knocking them Out. See the sections called "Types of Cards" and "Obstacle Cards" for more details.
When you use a card, place it in the Used Cards Area. If you interact with any Obstacle and choose to Destroy it, place it in the New Cards Area.
Whenever you interact with a Bullet Card, it always gets destroyed. Every destroyed Bullet Card goes straight to the top of the Bullets Deck instead of the New Cards Area.
You don't have to use every card in your hand on your turn. You keep the remaining cards in your hand. You can check the cards in your Player Discard and the number of cards in the Bullets Deck at any time.
When you've done all you wanted in this phase, you can move to the next one.
Tip: you can keep track of the Obstacles you are interacting with by nudging them slightly downwards in The Line.
3 | Refill Your Hand
At the beginning of this phase, take all the cards from the New Cards Area and add them to your hand. Keep in mind that there is no hand limit.
If you have 4 or more cards in your hand, move to the next phase.
But if you have fewer than 4, you should draw cards from your Player Deck so that you have 4 cards in hand.
If at any moment in the game you need to draw cards and your Player Deck is empty, take and shuffle cards from your Player Discard and create your new Player Deck, and then continue to draw cards.
If there are not enough cards to refill your hand up to 4 cards, meaning your Player Deck and your Player Discard are empty and there are no more cards to refill your hand, you have just lost the game!
4 | Maneuvers
In this phase you will remove Obstacles from slots on The Line depending on how many cards you used in phase 2, and which Obstacles you interacted with. First, count how many cards you have used during this turn, and then remove cards from the same number of slots counting from the start of The Line (from right to the left).
Remember! It does not matter if there are cards in those slots or not. You don't remove the same amount of cards as you have used. You only remove cards in the number of slots equal to the number of cards played.
For example, if you used 3 cards during phase 2, then the cards in the rightmost 3 slots are removed from The Line. Only those slots will get emptied, no matter if there are cards there or not.
- Face-up Obstacle Cards removed from The Line go to your Player Discard. Except for Bullet Cards; they go straight to your hand. If you have 4 or more Bullet Cards in your hand at any time, you lose the game!
- Face-down Obstacle Cards (Knocked out ones) removed from The Line go to the Obstacles Discard.
- After you have removed cards from The Line, move the cards from the Used Cards Area into the Obstacles Discard.
One good way to visualize this is to place the cards you used this turn below The Line, as shown in the picture. In this case the player used 3 cards, so the 3 rightmost slots will be emptied. There are only cards in 2 of those slots, so these cards are removed.
5 | Check the Goals
In this phase you should check to see if you've completed every goal from the current level. If all of them are flipped face down, that means you have completed the level and you should progress to the next one (see "Progression to the Next Level"). If that was Level 3, then you have just won the game! Congratulations!
If you have not completed all of the Goals, move to the next phase.
6 | Obstacle Abilities
During this phase, all the Obstacles remaining in The Line will activate their abilities described below their names. You can do this in any order you want. We recommend to do it from right to left, but if any card is dependent on another, like for example "Unarmed Dude", then you must first resolve the card that would let the other card be activated, not the other way around. In this case, activate any "Dude with Gun" or "Shotgun" before you resolve "Unarmed Dude". It's possible that several copies of the same Obstacle will be activated during this phase.
When an enemy shoots, place a number of Bullet Cards into the Obstacles Discard equal to the number of shoot symbols on the enemy. You will have some time before those bullets appear in The Line, so prepare!
If you move the last Bullet Card from the Bullets Deck into the Obstacles Discard, you have just lost the game! There are too many bullets in the air to avoid them all!
7 | Refill the Line
During this phase, any Obstacle Cards remaining in The Line are slid to the right and then The Line is refilled. Starting with the Obstacle Card that is closest to the Obstacles Discard, slide them one by one from left to the right to the first free slot. When all of them are in the rightmost slots next to each other, draw cards one by one from the Obstacles Deck refilling empty slots in The Line (starting from the rightmost empty slot), until there are a total of six Obstacles. If you run out of cards to draw, shuffle the Obstacles Discard and create a new Obstacles Deck this way.
If there are not enough cards in the Obstacles Discard and Obstacles Deck to refill The Line you have just lost the game!
Progression to the Next Level
When you complete all the goals, you will either advance to the next level or win the game! If you were on Level 1 or 2, do the following to prepare the game for the next level.
- Place any Goal Cards that you have completed during the current level on the bottom of the Goal Deck.
- Take all cards from The Line, Obstacles Deck, and Obstacles Discard and shuffle them into a single deck. Draw six new cards to form The Line for the next level and place the remaining cards on the left face up, as the new Obstacles Deck.
- Take your Player Discard, Player Deck, and cards from your hand (Bullets as well) and shuffle them. Place the newly created Player Deck in the same place where the old one was. Draw 4 cards from it to form your hand.
- Depending on what level it is, draw the appropriate number of cards from the top of the Goals Deck.
- a. If any of the Goal Cards would be automatically completed at this moment, place that Goal Card on the bottom of the Goal Deck and draw a new Goal Card in its place (even if it was the Goal Card that you vetoed in an earlier level).
- b. You may veto one Goal Card. If you do this, draw a new card (if it's completed then draw another one) and put the one that you just vetoed on top of the Goals Deck. Keep in mind a few things:
- You can only veto one Goal Card per level.
- You can't veto the same Goal Card twice in one game. The one that you just vetoed, you'll have to face on the next level.
- You can't veto any Goal Card on Level 3.
- Start the new level.
End Game
There is only one way to win in SUPERHOT The Card Game: by completing three levels of increasing difficulty!
However, keep in mind that you can lose in more than one way, so beware of the following conditions:
- Having at least four Bullet Cards in your hand.
- Running out of Bullet Cards in the Bullets Deck. Remember that you can check the Bullets Deck at any time in the game, so you can count them to be prepared and avoid this one.
- If there are not enough Obstacle Cards to refill The Line during phase 7 (either in the Obstacle Deck or Obstacle Discard).
- If you can't refill your hand up to 4 cards in total during phase 3, meaning there are not enough Obstacle Cards in your Player Deck and your Player Discard.
Ability Clarifications
Player Abilities
- Pliers: Choose one - Remove a Bullet Card from your hand and place it on the Bullets Deck; or draw a card from the Player Deck.
- Katana: Choose between using it as 2 Fighting or to destroy a Bullet Card from The Line and place it on the Bullets Deck.
- How about a glass?: Gives you 1 Dodge for every Obstacle Card in your Player Discard. If your Player Discard is empty, you can't play this card.
- Double trouble: Play this card along with another to use it twice. It's just like you used two copies of the card, so you can use each on a different Obstacle. For the effects of the "Maneuvers" phase, you only count the cards that you actually played and not the "virtual" ones!
Enemy Abilities
- Unarmed Dude: If another enemy shoots during phase 6, Unarmed Dude shoots a single bullet as well.
- Pillar: When it's in The Line during phase 6, you draw an extra card.
- Dude with Katana: If it's in The Line during phase 6, you must discard one Obstacle Card from your hand into the Obstacles Discard. You can't discard Bullet Cards this way.
- Dude with a Baseball Bat: You can spice up the gameplay and increase the difficulty by adding 1 or 2 "Dude with a Baseball Bat" cards to the Obstacles Deck during setup. To maintain the game's balance, remove the same number of "Dude with Gun" cards.
Co-op
The rules for the co-op mode are similar to the solo mode, with the following key differences:
- Individual decks: Each player has his/her own starting Player Deck (one deck marked for one player and one for the other) and they will take individual complete turns one after another. This means The Line activates, scrolls and refills after each player's turn.
- Setup: Take one card from each Player Deck, shuffle them and let one player choose from them. Whoever got the matching card goes first. Set the game up just like for solo mode, but each player has an individual Player Deck, hand of cards and his/her own Player Discard.
- Goals: To win the game, the players have to complete a sequence of three levels. The goals can be completed by either player. It's not important who completed which goal. Since they can help each other, the difficulty is increased. Draw one more Goal Card per level. Veto rules still apply.
- Level 1: 2 goals
- Level 2: 3 goals
- Level 3: 4 goals
- Veto: The players can veto one goal per level (except level 3), but only if they both agree. If they don't, nothing changes and they still have to face it on this level.
When a player finishes a level, the other player goes first on the next level.
Aid: Right after phase 2 (Use Cards) you can pass one unused Obstacle Card in your hand to the other player. To do so, place one from your hand face up on the table, between each player's play area. It can't be a Bullet Card! So you can't pass your bullets in the hope the other player will heal them for you, or simply to get rid of them from your hand! Finish the turn as usual.
On the next player's turn, he/she can use its ability as if it were in their hand. Keep it on the table until it's used, because it doesn't count as part of their hand. If the player doesn't use it, the card returns to the original player's Discard at the end of the turn.
If any lost game condition effect happens during any player's turn, the game stops immediately and both players lose. Additionally there is one extra losing condition: if both players have a combined total of 5 bullets in their hands, they've lost the game!
Versus
Versus is an advanced game mode. It's advised that both players have played either the solo or a cooperative game to see how the game flows before trying this mode of play.
The System Player wants to stop the Normal Player from completing the sequence of 2 levels. To do that the System Player can use powerful glitches: abilities that affect The Line. It's quite the challenge for the Normal Player!
The Normal Player plays first. Then it's the System Player's turn, then the Normal Player again, and so on.
The System Player draws the top 4 cards from the Obstacles Discard and uses the skill values from the bottom half of the cards to activate his/her abilities listed on the System Card. That means the System Player deals with three kinds of skill values: Fighting, Dodge, and Mixed. If there aren't enough cards in the Obstacles Discard, draw the remaining cards from the Obstacles Deck.
Fighting and Dodge work the same as for a Normal Player, which means they can be used by themselves or combined to add to a Mixed total. Cards which offer Mixed skill values can only be used for abilities that use Mixed skill values.
Contrary to the Normal Players, the System Player can add up the total of skill values in hand and divide them to activate different abilities. The same ability can be used multiple times, as long as the player has enough skill values to use.
As the System Player, fan your cards to the right!
At the end of the turn, the System Player's used and unused cards are discarded to the top of the Obstacles Discard.
The abilities of Obstacles in The Line don't activate during the System Player's turn.
In Versus mode the Normal Player has to clear only two levels instead of three.
- Level 1: 1 Goal Card
- Level 2: 2 Goal Cards
- Veto: the same rules apply as per the solo game.
The Normal Player is trying to complete both levels to win the game, while The System Player will do everything in his/her power to make this impossible. If the Normal Player meets any of the 4 end game conditions, the System Player wins!
2 vs 1
2 vs 1 is an advanced game mode, and it's advised that all players have played either the solo or a cooperative game to see how the game flows before trying this mode of play.
2 vs 1 combines the Co-op rules and the Versus rules. There are 2 Normal Players, and 1 System Player. After each Normal Player's turn, the System Player draws the top 4 cards from the Obstacles Discard and uses the skill values on the bottom half of the cards to activate the System Player abilities described on the System Card. If there aren't enough cards in the Obstacles Discard, draw cards from the Obstacles Deck after drawing all you can from the Discard.
Player 1 plays first, then the System Player, then Player 2, then the System Player and so on. Use the same sequence when starting a new level.
The Normal Players win when they complete a sequence of 2 levels:
- Level 1: 2 Goal Cards
- Level 2: 3 Goal Cards
- Veto: The players can veto one goal per level, but only if they both agree. If they don't, nothing changes and they must complete it on this level.
The System Player will try to do everything in his/her power to stop the Normal Players from finishing both levels. Any of the normal 4 end game conditions are in effect in this mode as well. When any of them happen, the System Player wins, but there are 2 changes:
- If any Normal Player gets 4 bullets in their hand, the game ends immediately and the System Player wins.
- If there are a total of 5 bullets in total in both players' hands at any time, the game ends immediately and the System Player wins.
Aid: The Normal Players can share a card as in the Co-op game mode, although The System Player can't interfere with the cards that players hand each other between turns.
Challenges
Once you've got a grasp of SUPERHOT The Card Game's mechanics and would like a different challenge, here's a series of ways to spice it up. You can mix and match them, but we suggest using only one at a time until you are very experienced:
- Bullet Storm: During the setup, add 3 Bullet Cards to the bottom 9 Obstacle Cards instead of 1.
- Time's Up: During the setup, remove 2 Bullet Cards from the Bullets Deck.
- 7 Line: Instead of 6 cards in The Line, use 7.
- Infinite Mode: If you want to continue playing past the last level, add another one! Draw one more goal than the previous level. How many levels can you clear? Naturally, the game will get considerably longer.
- 1v1 Revenge: In Versus mode, swap the roles and play through the levels again as the opposite role.
Credits
Designer: Manuel Correia Art designer: Paweł Niziołek
First of all, thank you to the Kickstarter backers! Without you the game wouldn't have been published. I hope you like it. Thank you to all the playtesters for your valuable feedback, in particular Sara Mena, Ian Schreiber, Björn Müller Mätzig, Matthias Rigling, Rui Malhado and Spielwerk Hamburg.
Thank you Board & Dice for the support and the Superhot Team for making an amazing game and letting me play with it.
And of course, thank you Donald X Vaccarino for Dominion and for introducing the deckbuilding mechanism to the world.
Special thanks to Gaming Rules! for great editing work.
Board and Dice, Ryszarda Wagnera 34/14, 52-129 Wrocław, Poland — [email protected] — www.boardanddice.com