A downloadable card game

Welcome to Joker Jailbreak! This is a single-player, physical card game you can play with a standard 52 card deck.
Created by Ramon Huiskamp (roofkat).

Setup:

  1. Remove jokers from your set.
  2. Place a joker on the table.
  3. Shuffle the remaining cards.
  4. Place stacks of six cards top-down on each of the four sides of the joker, forming the jail walls.
  5. Place two cards top-down on each of the joker's four diagonals, forming the corners.
  6. Place an open card on each wall and corner stack (you should end up with 8 open cards surrounding the joker).
  7. The remaining cards are called the "Remainder".


Joker Jailbreak setup

Joker Jailbreak setup: W = wall, C = corner, the blue cards are top-down

Goal:

Clear out one of the four walls around the joker, so they can be free! Hurray!
(Clearing out a corner does not let the joker escape, they can't squeeze through the walls like that.)

How to play:

  • Play black cards against red cards of the exact same score to get rid of them
    • E.g.: a black 6 can be played against a red 6, or a red 4 and a red 2.
  • Turn around the cards that were underneath the cards you played against each other.
  • Repeat!

Rules:

  • The Ace counts as 1, the Jack as 11, Queen as 12 and the King as 13.
  • You can play cards from the Remainder on top of the joker, with a limit of three cards in a stack.
    • These cards can be useful if you're stuck, and can be played anytime.
    • However, they have to be cleared out in order to win, the joker can't escape with any card on top of him.

Fail state: 

  • You lose when you are no longer able to play any cards against each other.

Strategy:

  • Try to play away the walls as much as possible, try to avoid clearing out corners as it will limit your options, which i turn lowers your chances of clearing out a wall.

Alterations:

  • To change the difficulty, add or remove cards from the corners. More cards in the corners makes it easier, less cards in corners make it harder.

Finishing notes:

  • This was made over a weekend at my parents' place, inspired by Tom Francis's Gridcannon. I liked the constraints of making a single-player game with a standard 52 card deck, and it was quite fun to create!
  • Thanks to my sister for the name :) I was going to call it Jailed Joker, but that's a bit of a tongue twister. 
  • Please tweet me @roofkatgames to let me know what you think!
  • I'm working on a videogame by myself called WarpThrough, would be great if you could check that out! https://store.steampowered.com/app/957770/WarpThrough/
StatusPrototype
CategoryPhysical game
Rating
Rated 4.8 out of 5 stars
(5 total ratings)
AuthorRamon Huiskamp
GenreCard Game
TagsDRM Free, physical, Short

Download

Download
JokerJailbreak_Description.pdf 185 kB

Install instructions

The file is just a pdf! I just wanted a page to put the description for this little card game :)

Comments

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(+1)

This game is so cool added to a Brazilian game site, to track my plays.

Joker Jailbreak BR

Thats awesome, and looks amazing with the deck you have!

what happens if the remainder cards run out?

(+1)

This is one of my favorite card games. Made a few videos on our new channel.

(the videos are Serbian language)

That's great to hear, really glad you're enjoying it and thank you for sharing :)

(+1)

Neat game!

Thanks Lilou :)