2011 | Designer: Cherilyn Joy Lee Kirkman | Artist/Graphics: Chris Kirkman
Think Ferris wheels, roller-coasters, carousels, flying swings, and bumper cars! Open your Carnival for business before the other carnies do by building four of the five available rides along your Midway. Then cue the Carnival music and watch the crowd rush in!
Carnival is Dice Hate Me Games’ first publication. It is a product reflecting the designers’ dedication, philosophies, and most importantly, their passion for games.
Step right up. Enjoy your ride.
Play
Carnival is a card game of set collection for 2-4 players, ages 12+, that utilizes dice to determine actions.
Players take on the roles of carnival bosses, trying to build rides along their Midway and open for business before all the other carnies can! Each turn, a player has the choice to roll three dice and chooses two of them to perform various actions that will allow them to gain cards from the deck, discard pile, their opponents’ hands or even steal valuable ride parts from other Midways. The coveted Wild cards are versatile: players can use them to fill in for missing parts on their rides or can discard them to refresh the cards in their hand. Each player also has three Tickets which may be discarded to affect the dice rolls or block other players’ actions.
Rules
The Carnival version 2.0 rules are available in two downloadable formats.
Variants
- QUICK PLAY – A shorter game may be achieved by playing until one player (or team in Team Carnival) has built 3 (out of 5 possible) rides.
- THE “CLASSIC” – Players are not rewarded with a Ticket when a natural set is built.
- THE NORWOOD MANEUVER – After Dice Roll Actions have been assigned to the tableau, the active player may discard two Tickets to declare one Dice Roll Action as Privileged. This Dice Roll Action cannot be blocked through use of a Ticket by any other player.
- THE HORNER GAMBIT – Players may discard a Ticket to play one card from their own hand to complete another player’s ride in that player’s Midway, and move that completed ride to their own Midway. If a natural set is formed, the player is not rewarded with a Ticket as in the regular game.
Press
- “I think this is going to appeal to both the hobby gamers and those who prefer more traditional fare. And coming from a family that has both, that’s always a good thing.” – Patrick Thunstrom, A Digital Magician
- “What you need to take from this is that Carnival is fun. It’s a good game. It’s worthy of your time and your expenditure to get it. I am looking forward to my next play of Carnival and you should be too!” – John Moller, Cartrunk Entertainment
- “Once my girlfriend and I deciphered the rules which should have been a lot easier considering they were only 1 page, we discovered a very fast-paced and charming game. Very similar in feel to Monopoly Deal (the card game), we found this game to be a lot more interesting in theme and execution while integrating more components to play with.” – Wil, nerdy little secret
- “While not too heavy, Carnival is not as light some people think.” – Jason, play board games
- “I kickstarted the game mostly to support a new company that I believed in; that Carnival is great fun to play is just icing on the cake. We ended up playing four games back to back and will likely play many more in the future.” – Farmer Lenny, I Slay the Dragon
- “It’s got kind of a Reiner Knizia feel, but without boring math exercises. It’s fairly simple, but it has some neat twists that you haven’t seen before, and they force you to think on your feet while you make plans in your head.” – Matt Drake, Drake’s Flames
- “The first thing that jumped out at me about Carnival is how original it is.” – Chris Norwood, GamerChris.com
- “I was overjoyed to see it has one of my favorite game mechanics: worker placement with dice. Two other games I really enjoy, Kingsburg and Alien Frontiers, also play this way.” – Cyrus, Father Geek
- “It’s a game with a two page rulebook, but there’s a lot of meat hidden between those two pages…Quick and satisfying set collection card game with unique dice mechanic, great theme, warm fuzzies for helping a great gaming company get off the ground.” – Michael Harrison, Wired.com’s GeekDad
- “As for the game itself, it literally does look beautiful. For the first game out of the gate, the component manufacturing choices are top-notch (thick punchboard, linen finished card printing, etc.), and the graphic design is highly profesional.” – Matt Morgan, MTV Geek