Arlukkachase Card Game
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Arlukkachase is a portable card game that comes in a beautifully presented magnetic lid box. It is a simple card game designed for families that has very few rules but lots of player interaction.
The game has 55 cards, 2 of which are rules, and it is suitable for 2 to 5 players aged 7 plus.
The aim of the game is to hold the special Arlukkey card for one whole round, but this wont be so easy with some of the other players playing as Darkarlukka who win if they manage to infect all other players. Not only are you competing against the Darkarlukka, but other players will be able to steal some of your cards, force you to discard cards and lots of other tricks to try to win the game themselves.
With the fate of the world in your hands will you survive long enough to win the Arlukkachase.
Awards
Rating
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Artwork
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Complexity
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Replayability
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Player Interaction
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Component Quality
You Might Like
- Simple gameplay once you figure out the rules
- Lovely box and cards. Art style is simple but stylish
- Nice twist on player elimination means no one is forced to sit out and watch the game
- Encourages team play to defeat the Darkalukka
- Compact magnetic box is sturdy and perfect for travelling
Might Not Like
- The rules provided with the game are not clear
- Some parts of the game feel under developed particularly around team play and communication
- The way in which the battles occur, especially with multiple players, can become quickly confusing and it can slow down game play rather than make it more frenetic
- The game is basically all “take that”. For people who don’t like this, it definitely won’t convert them
- While it works, it’s not particularly engaging at 2 player count
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Description
Arlukkachase is a portable card game that comes in a beautifully presented magnetic lid box. It is a simple card game designed for families that has very few rules but lots of player interaction.
The game has 55 cards, 2 of which are rules, and it is suitable for 2 to 5 players aged 7 plus.
The aim of the game is to hold the special Arlukkey card for one whole round, but this wont be so easy with some of the other players playing as Darkarlukka who win if they manage to infect all other players. Not only are you competing against the Darkarlukka, but other players will be able to steal some of your cards, force you to discard cards and lots of other tricks to try to win the game themselves.
With the fate of the world in your hands will you survive long enough to win the Arlukkachase.
You have begun the quest to save the world from a deadly virus and stop Darkarlukka. Do you think you are strong enough? Are your Arlukkachase powers up to the task? Maybe I should explain how you might go about it first…
A quick foreword however, the guides on how to play Arlukkachase, I found difficult to understand at times and they didn’t explain some terms or what to do in certain situations. So after doing some playtesting, I’ve come up with how I think it’s meant to be played, or some alternate rules for you to consider.
Objective
To win, Arlukkachase you need to hold the Arlukkey card in your hand for one round. It’s unclear what constitutes a round, so I played that after picking up the Arlukkey, each player has their turn and when it becomes your turn again, and you still have the key, you win. If at any point you lose the key, this ’round’ resets. Darkarlukka can also win if all players are infected.
Settings up
To set up a game of Arlukkachase, you need to separate out the deck into marked and unmarked cards. The marked cards have a green square with a black dot on them.
2 player game –
Decide who is playing as Darkarlukka and deal them 8 unmarked cards. Deal the other player 7 unmarked cards and 1 marked Arlukkashield card.
3-5 player game –
Decide who is playing as Darkarlukka and deal them 8 unmarked cards. Deal each other player 5 unmarked cards and 1 marked Arlukkashield card.
Bonus Pile
The bonus pile that is referred to is actually 2 piles. Put all the Darkarlukka cards into one pile and all the Arlukkashields into another. Whenever a card says to draw from the bonus pile, you can choose which cards to draw from either of these piles.
Draw Pile
To construct the draw pile take all the remaining unmarked cards and add 3 Arlukkashield cards, 3 Darkarlukka cards and all the cursed cards. Then shuffle the pile. Finally, add the Arlukkey card to the bottom of the pile, face up, after it’s been shuffled.
Well done, you are ready to start the game!
Players turns
Each turn, the player whose turn it is can ‘use’ any number of cards from their hands, but they must be played one at once in case one of your opponents counters (we’ll come onto countering/battles in a minute). The rules say that this rule is optional, by which I can only imagine they mean you can change it to players can only play one card per turn, unless they are countering another player’s card. It’s up to you how you play it.
When cards have been used they get added to the bottom of the draw pile. I suggest to save yourselves faffing around with the deck all the time, you just put them on a discard pile. If the deck runs out, just flip the discard pile over and continue from there. If a card tells you to shuffle the draw pile, add them together and shuffle.
If you are ready to end your turn, you do so by either drawing a card from the deck, or inserting a card into it. There isn’t a mention of where you can or can’t insert it, so I assume it can be inserted anywhere. I imagine this is mostly used by the
Darkarlukka player(s) when trying to get the other players to draw Darkarlukka cars. Or for bold non-infected players to try and stun Darkarlukka players with Arlukkashield cards.
If at any point you draw a Darkarlukka card as a non-infected player (which at the start is anyone not playing as Darkarlukka), then you become infected, lose, and are now working with the Darkarlukka player. This can only be stopped if you have an Arlukkashield card, at which point do what it says on the card. If a Darkarlukka player (which includes those infected) has, by draw or other means, an Arlukkashield in their hand, they are stunned, at which point do what it says on the card.
Attacking and Countering
Rob, Beg and Bom cards are attack cards, and peeking at your opponents cards is also considered attacking. If you are attacked by an opponent, you may try and counter them, which you can do in a few ways. In Arlukkachase you can:
● Play the same card that they played. This will turn the attack back on them but with an increase in power. So destroy 1 card becomes destroy 2, rob 1 becomes rob 2. Keep in mind the opponent can do this back at you again, and you can also do it again, and them again, and you again etc, so long as you have the cards. You get the idea. Each time it’s countered with the same card, the power increases by 1.
● Play a Reflect card. This reflects the attack back at your opponent but does not increase the power involved. Destroy 1 would still be destroy 1. Reflect can also be used to reflect, reflect cards…and you see where this is going. You can keep doing this so long as you both have reflect cards. And finally you can reflect Naah cards.
● Play a Naah card. Naah cards stop the last card played by your opponent, but it doesn’t work on marked cards. So the tricky thing with Naah cards is it says it stops the last card your opponent played, which is fine if it’s at the start of a chain, job done, but what if it’s not? Or what if it’s reflected. The way I played it, is that if you are several cards deep in a chain and someone plays a Naah, then the chain ends and nobody wins. The reason I did this is if you play it
that the last card didn’t count, but the chain continues, you run into all sorts of questions I won’t list here. But it’s up to you. You can reflect a Naah, which I played as it just makes it Naah the Naah (which you can also do) like it didn’t exist. Of course they could reflect again…
My advice for these battles is try not to let them go too overboard, and just carefully work out what you are doing at each stage amongst yourselves to avoid arguments.
The last thing to be noted about these is the bonuses. If you win a battle in which 4 cards have been played, you can draw 1 card from the bonus pile. 5 cards = 2 cards from the bonus pile, 6 cards = 3. You get the idea.
Round up
Arlukkachase is a game which is both simple, but can have complex interactions. So at least while you’re learning, take your time with it and don’t be afraid to house rule something if that makes more sense to your group. Once you get to grips with it though it’s a fun quick game and I hope you enjoy it!
Viruses eh? Seems like we have only finished dealing with one and another one comes along in it’s place to take over the world. At least this one comes in a very fetching box though so it’s not all bad…
In Arlukkachase, you and your friends will battle a dark and deadly Virus (rather than those cute and fluffy viruses that you may be used to) in order to save the world. Can you find the key to vanquishing the Darkarlukka virus forever? Will you be able to overcome your friends as they turn against you one by one? And will you be able to resist playing with the shiny, magnetic box lid long enough to win the game? Nothing is for certain in the Arlukkachase, but lets give it a go, shall we?
Arlukka-what now?
Arlukkachase is a card game for 1-5 players which pits one player as the Darkarlukka trying to take over the other players before they find the key to their defeat. The good news is that, unlike immunology in the real world, there will be no slaving away in laboratories for months on end. In fact the battle against the Darkarlukka virus will generally last about 25 minutes, entails much mocking of your friends and doesn’t require the use of any test tubes or petri dishes. Although feel free to have some on hand if it makes you feel safer. The bad news is that you’ll probably lose. And you’ll definitely say the phrase “-arlukka” a lot more than you’ll feel comfortable with.
Take That – Back For Good?
So at it’s heart Arlukkachase is a game reliant on Gotcha card play or “Take that” as it’s sometimes referred. Anyone who has ever played Uno or Exploding Kittens will be familiar with the way the game works: Players are dealt a hand of cards and take turns to play one or more on their turn, each with different abilities. Most of these abilities will negatively affect another player e.g making them skip a turn, give up one of the cards from their hand or be forced to draw from the deck. In Arlukkachase, however the main difference is that instead of all players playing against each other, the aim is to defeat one, the Darkarlukka player. Players win individually, by holding the Arlukkakey card for one round, and are in competition for this, but the addition of a Dark Side changes the feel of the game subtly. While games such as Exploding Kittens can be quite chaotic, with attacks coming from all sides and balance of play shifting from one card play to the next, the flow of Arlukkachase is more measured. Players try to survive the early onslaught of the Darkarlukka long enough to gain the advantage and make their superior numbers count while vying for position to win.
This is made harder by the fact that any player who receives a Darkarlukka card and is not able to play a shield card, will be infected… and instantly turns to the dark side. It is this mechanism which makes Arlukkachase stand out from the Take That crowd. In many games with player elimination, players lose and sit out, however in Arlukkachase, defeated players simply carry on playing as one of the Darkarlukka’s helpers and can win as one of Darkarlukka’s team. It’s a nice way to minimise any resentment for players knocked out early as no one is forced to sit out and watch the rest of the game played without them. It also keeps things interesting as every time this happens the game gets much harder to win for the “good” guys.
I Got The Power!
According to the developers wesbite, Arlukka means “power”. The English dictionary might disagree but I’m not going to. The majority of the cards in the deck are power cards, which will either be attack cards, such as bomb, rob or skip cards, which pretty much speak for themselves. There are also cards which react to these, namely “reflect” or “naah” cards which will bounce back effects or simply negate them. When attack cards are played then a battle begins between the card player and the target player. Playing an attack card of the same type will reflect it back at a plus one strength ( so playing a bomb card, on another bomb card would result in the first player destroying two cards… unless they play another or a card to reflect or negate it). After a battle, players win cards from the draw deck depending on how many cards were played in the battle, which helps prevent the winning player being too depleted after a protracted battle. However, by drawing cards, players can end up taking into their hand Darkarlukka cards which can instantly turn a player to the dark side. To prevent this they have to play an Arlukkashield, one for every Darkarlukka card they receive, hence even winning a battle can lead to overall defeat. For the Dark player, there is a similar disincentive. If they pick up a shield card, they are stunned and miss a go for every one. This means that while the battles are pretty frequent, it doesn’t devolve into frenzy too often.
The final type of card available are curse cards. These are 4 cards placed in the draw deck randomly before the game begins. Each has a different one off effect which isn’t game breaking but forces whichever player receiving it to discard cards from their hand or to draw from the bonus deck (which I’ll get on to later) to put in a shield or a dark card depending on their preference. As curses go they’re not one of the really bad ones bad one, not up their with being forced to feed on human blood or recite poetry at random wedding guests but it can be pretty inconvenient nonetheless.
There’s no getting away form it, in a game like Arlukkachase, the luck of the draw is paramount. If fortune smiles on you it’s lovely to sit in the sun and snigger while everyone is sniping each other, knowing you have enough shields and nope cards to ward off their attacks. But a bad draw of a couple of dark cards and all of a suddenly you are hanging in the shadows playing with the bad boys and plotting revenge against the so-called ally who just stitched you up.
Arlukkachuckles
Make no mistake, Arlukka is a fun game with lots of opportunities for underhand shennanigans. The game could be described as semi-cooperative, as all players are against the Darkarlukka at the beginning and the longer this continues, the harder it is for Darkarlukka. If all players are infected then Darkarlukka wins. At the same time, only the player with the key will win so there is a balance between being too aggressive with other non-Dark players, as the more you knock out, the more people will be aggressively gunning for you and standing in the way of your goal; but be too passive and another player will take the prize. It means that you always have to be on your toes, but trusting other players not to attack you while at the same time keep a couple of the reflect and Naah cards in your hand in case things get tricky in the final stages of the game. This is especially the case when the Key comes out, as there is one full round to hold out while pretty much everyone will be trying to take the card from you, so preparation is important.
The Dark Side
So is this an easy recommend then? Well… not quite. Arlukkachase is a very light game to provide 30 minutes of fun between a group of friends who are less interested in thinking and more interested in laughing- preferably at each other and that is just fine. The problem is that the rules that came with the game are, to put it charitably, sparse. They simply don’t give enough information on how to play the game, what can be done on a turn and in some cases just don’t make any sense.
For example, the rules several times refers to a bonus deck of marked cards, which players can draw from. What it doesn’t make clear though is whether this is actually two separate decks (containing the shields on one hand and the Dark cards on the other) or whether both of these should be shuffled together. Either of these could be correct however it would change the game considerably. In other instances, the rules talk of inserting cards into the deck but don’t specify if this is necessarily at the bottom. Can you put it anywhere? Does that include back on top? It took me a long time to get this game to the table because frankly I wasn’t a hundred per cent sure of how it worked and the timing of effects. This is particularly the case in battles where it isn’t entirely clear what the effect of Naah cards is- do they negate all of the cards or just the last one played. In the end, battles can turn into extended periods of discussing exactly what effects are happening and to whom rather than the most raucous element of the game.
Similarly, the game felt somewhat under developed in terms of what you could actually do within the rules. While I appreciate that this may have been deliberate to allow players to play the game in their own way, I appreciate a little more structure to how game play works especially when teaching it to others. For example, I was unsure about what could be communicated to other players about their cards in hand- and whether if it was allowed, could it be done secretly to prevent the Darkarlukka player from hearing. It wasn’t a huge issue but it was just another area where some clarity or further detail could’ve helped.
The rules themselves are written on two cards and I think unfortunately the game manufacturer has favoured brevity and compact design over clarity.
Luckily for me, and for you, fellow Zatu blogger, Ross Coulbeck has developed an excellent How to Play guide which is very clear and easy to follow and helped to clear up most of the issues at least.
The other gripe I had was the two-player version of the game. It isn’t alone in this, but playing at two players is quite lacklustre and accentuates the luck element- a good card draws for one player can win the game very quickly. Arlukkachase definitely plays better with more players, leaning into the chaos that it clearly thrives on.
One final word on Arlukkachase’s production. I really liked the art work on the cards and the presentation of the box. Some people I spoke to weren’t as keen feeling the cards were too dark and looked very similar, but this wasn’t a problem while playing and I think is just personal taste. The game box is vey well made and I really appreciated that everything fitted inside a pocket sized box.
Arlukkatastic?
The main selling point for Arlukkachase is also it’s main weakness and will dictate who will want to buy this game: It is feather-light in terms of gameplay, favouring simple card play and snappy “Gotcha” moments over any strategic planning. There are elements of team play but not enough to get your teeth into as the game is usually finished before anyone can form anything other than a passing alliance. And honestly, that isn’t really my bag with card games. However given the immense and continued popularity of Uno, it is plenty of other people’s. There is definitely a niche for card games you can play in under half an hour, take on the move and whip out and put away quickly and this certainly fills it (although a link to better rules on line is a must). And on a personal level, I preferred it to my experience playing Exploding Kittens. What it lacks the cutesy art work and humour it makes up for in more inclusive gameplay by removing the knockout element. And for a family game, when you are likely playing with younger kids particularly, that is no bad thing.
Zatu Score
Rating
- Artwork
- Complexity
- Replayability
- Player Interaction
- Component Quality
You might like
- Simple gameplay once you figure out the rules
- Lovely box and cards. Art style is simple but stylish
- Nice twist on player elimination means no one is forced to sit out and watch the game
- Encourages team play to defeat the Darkalukka
- Compact magnetic box is sturdy and perfect for travelling
Might not like
- The rules provided with the game are not clear
- Some parts of the game feel under developed particularly around team play and communication
- The way in which the battles occur, especially with multiple players, can become quickly confusing and it can slow down game play rather than make it more frenetic
- The game is basically all take that. For people who dont like this, it definitely wont convert them
- While it works, its not particularly engaging at 2 player count