Did you know that 74% of medieval law breaking was due to theft? Well, today the Joker has been found guilty of treason making up the minority of all criminals from the time. Joker Jailbreak is a fun little single player card game that I found on YouTube. It breaks away from the traditional single player format of a solitaire-like game and instead offers a wholly innovative experience. To be honest, I find solitaire a little lacklustre and boring. Joker Jailbreak offers us something new.
How to Set up
One Standard 52 card deck, with 1 Joker removed
1 player
Play time
20-40 mins depending on experience.
Complexity
3*
RANK OF CARDS:
K (13 points), Q, J, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, Ace (1 point)
Objective:
To break the Joker out of the cell
Special Cards
Joker: player card
Set Up
The Joker is placed in the centre of the table and then is surrounded by 4 cards along each of its edges. These cards are the walls of cell and are 6 cards deep with one face up on top for 7. You will now have a cross shape with the Joker in the middle. Along the sides you will have 4 corners, these are 2 cards deep with one face up for 3 cards total.
The Play
The aim is to free the prisoner, we do this by slowly removing the walls around the prison. The Joker can only escape through the walls, he is too big to squeeze through the corners. Walls can be removed if they match in value, but are alternate colours. For example, a 4 of hearts can remove a 4 of spades. Alternatively, cards may add up to the same value. By this we mean a 10 of clubs could be removed from the board using a 6 of hearts and a 4 of diamonds.
The prison has 4 corners and 4 walls, so 8 cards to choose from to make combinations. If you run out of potential combinations you can place one of the remaining cards from the deck onto the Joker. This adds another barrier and this card must be removed if you want to free the Joker.
Tips and Tricks
The corners cards should only be used sparingly. As discussed earlier, the Joker cannot escape from the corners. If you manage to completely exhaust the coroner you have only reduced the total number of combinations available to you.
The Original Video
Conclusion
Joker Jailbreak is a great single player card game. It helps us break away from the monotony of established games like solitaire. Aesthetically it’s also quite pleasing to play and can be played on a relatively small playing area so great for travelling too. The only criticism that can be held to the game is its simplicity, but there is only so much you can do with a single player game. Often luck needs to be added to make single player games harder and that’s not necessarily fun.
