Card shedding and cuteness

Who doesn’t love otters? 🦦
And who doesn’t like card-shedding games?

Otter is a small box card game that combines these two awesome things into a single bombastic package! 😊 Similar to how the recently covered Capybara Crush (also from Charming Games ) combined capybaras and pattern building. 👍

The premise is simple: Players each get 10 cards from the deck, which has cards of 5 suits with values 1 to 13. Your job is to get rid of those cards as fast as possible. The way you play cards is pretty ingenious! 😉

Each turn you gift your cards to the 3 otters in the middle of the table. They are each made up of a head and a tail card, and their bellies are where cards are played. The head shows a rule regarding the value 🔢 of cards, and the tail shows what suit ♣️ the otter wants. When playing cards you have to choose a single otter, and be able to follow either the head or the tail rule. If you follow both you can go again, getting rid of multiple cards. 💪 If you only match a single rule, your turn is over. 👉 For example an otter might want Even numbers and the Oyster suit. You could give him a ‘3’ Oyster, but then your turn is over. 

That’s already pretty clever but there is one more important thing: You can also flip or swap head and tail cards to change the rules, but you have to “pay” by drawing a card for every flip/swap. Thus e.g. the Even rule could become Odd, or the Oyster suit could become the Starfish suit. As your goal is to get rid of cards you don’t really want to draw additional ones, but changing the rules at the right time is quintessential to play more than 1-2 cards at a turn.

Draw randomness for your starting hand can play a role in whether you win or not - as tends to be the case with card shedding games. However the quick playtime and the fact that you are playing best of 5s or 7s neutralizes this, so watching for opportunities and skillfully changing up the otters can lead you to victory.