Long Suit
Hold your eight. Name your long suit.
What it is
The card game families know, played with one ordinary deck against one, two or three computers. Match the top card of the pile by suit or by rank. An eight plays on anything, and whoever plays it names the next suit, which stays large on the pile until someone plays on it. First to empty their hand wins.
Seven cards each against one computer, five each against two or three, and you play first. You can draw a card whenever you like, and you have to when nothing plays; if the card you draw plays, play it or keep it. When the draw pile runs out, the cards already played are shuffled into a new pile, once. After that, if a full round passes with nobody able to play or draw, the fewest cards wins, and equal fewest share it, so every game ends.
Cards that play lift in your hand before you touch anything, and the rest dim. A card that doesn’t play wiggles, and the top of the pile lights. Play an eight and the four suits open, with the suit you hold most of ringed in gold.
The shuffle is fair, and the computers can’t see your cards. They decide from what anyone at the table could see: their own cards, the pile, how many cards each player holds, and which suits each player has drawn on. They play a little sharper after you win and gentler after you lose. You can give yourself and the computers names.
How to play
- Sit downTap the table
- Play a cardTap a lifted card
- Name the next suitTap an eight, then a suit
- Draw a cardTap the draw pile
Tap the table, or Tap here to play, to sit down: you’re at the bottom, and you play first. Before you sit down, tap a computer’s × to take it away, or Tap to add at an empty seat. After tapping an eight, tap anywhere else to keep it. If the card you drew plays, tap it, or tap Keep it. Names, at the bottom right, names you and the computers, and the speaker beside it turns the sound on. After a game, tap Play again, or Computers 1 2 3 to change the table. Put the phone down mid-game and it waits for you: nothing takes your game away.
On a desktop, click just as by touch. Or use the keys: Enter sits down, the arrow keys move a ring along your hand, and Enter plays the card it is on (the first press shows the ring). D draws and K keeps a drawn card. After an eight, 1 to 4 name spades, hearts, clubs and diamonds, and Escape keeps the eight. N opens the names.
What isn’t settled yet
No action cards: no skips, no reversals, no pick-up-two. Every card is matched only by its suit or rank.
One person at a time. Every hand is hidden, so two people can’t share the screen.
You can’t pick the computers’ strength. They step up after you win and down after you lose.
You always play first, which is a small edge with three or four at the table.
One game is one round. Nothing is scored from game to game.
Names are forgotten when the page closes.
Held sideways on a phone, the cards are small.
Build Log
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Build 1
Every game ends. When the draw pile runs out, the cards already played are shuffled into a new pile once, never twice. After that, a full round in which nobody can play or draw ends the game, and the player holding the fewest cards wins. Reshuffling every time let one simulated game go on for ever, the four eights going round and round. With one reshuffle every game has to finish, and 6,900 test games at two, three and four players, under all three drawing rules, all did.
Credits and licences
No third-party engine — it draws to a plain canvas. The typefaces it does use are embedded under the SIL Open Font Licence, with the copyright notice retained in the shipped file. Cover drawn from the game’s own card code.
Long Suit is original work by Launchway Games.