Stacking games, as well as other physical games, have intrinsic ties to both the toys that we played with as a child and also with idle-hands activities like cairn-stacking and the assembly of house of cards. Cards vs Gravity takes this and gives it a big twist into a dexterity-focused game that’s both intuitive and quick to pick-up and play.
Cards vs Gravity might seem familiar, and that’s because its from Steve Howe who is the same designer as 2011’s Librium, which is an incredibly similar design, albeit lacking the bright colours and more approachable intent behind it.
Gameplay is simple. You attach the central retainer to the top of a bottle of drink (there are set instructions for the minimum liquid level inside, for stability purposes), and then shuffle the cards and deal them out between the players. Each of the cards have four small slits in them, as does the central retainer. The entire aim of the game is to place your card into an appropriate space in a manner where gravity, physics and other scientific terms for forces take over the workload for you, suspending the new card through that one slot. It’s tricky at first, until you relax and lean into the weight transfer, and before long there’ll be half a dozen cards jutting out from the bottle, precariously hovering in a borderline-baffling display.
In that way its nigh identical to its predecessor, however Cards vs Gravity differs in two major ways. Firstly, the cards are colourful and bright, which is great for drawing attention at the random game store you’re playing it, but it also gives some structure to the game in that the starting card has coloured sides indicating a direction to build out from. This can, on a bad shuffle, create a trickier, shorter game… but I’m sure that most people will opt out of the colour system if it is too tricky. There are also, as a result, wildcard cards in there which can be any colour.
The second feature is thinner and thicker cards which are mixed in with the deck. For me, these are the biggest standout; They’re not only somewhat tougher to actually place due to the changed density and weight of the card, but they’re also much harder to place cards into and they encourage you to use all of the rules (specifically the ‘hanging’ of cards rather than just building upwards and outwards) when it comes to having a longer game.
All in all, Cards vs Gravity is a great, quick to set up party game that almost doubles as a party trick for those passing by.
Cards vs Gravity is available now from Amazon.
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