Play Ember Ridge Crazy Eights

How to play Ember Ridge Crazy Eights

Classic Crazy Eights at a camp table on a pine ridge. Match the top card by suit or rank, play an eight to name a new suit, and be the first to empty your hand.

1. Press Play. With three friends, everyone gets five cards. Yours sit along the bottom, sorted by suit with the eights at the end. Nutmeg sits on your left, Hugo across the table and Mortimer on your right, each holding a fan of face-down cards.
2. The rest of the deck is the stock, face down in the middle, and its top card is turned up to start the discard pile. An eight turned up is buried in the stock and the next card is turned instead. Play starts on the dealer’s left and goes clockwise.
3. On your turn, play one card that matches the top card of the pile by suit or by rank. On a 7 of hearts you may play any heart or any 7. Tap a card to pick it up and tap it again to play it.
4. Eights are wild. Play an eight on anything, then pick the suit the next player must follow. They must play that suit or another eight.
5. If nothing fits, tap the stock. By default you keep drawing until a card fits, then play it. You may draw even when you could play. When the stock is empty and nothing fits, you pass. If nobody can play, the hand is blocked and the lowest hand wins it.
6. The first player to play their last card wins the hand and scores the cards left in the other hands: 50 for each eight, 10 for each king, queen, jack and ten, 1 for each ace and face value for the rest. The first to 200 at a table of four (150 for three, 100 for two) wins the game.

Controls

• Touch or mouse: tap a card to pick it up and tap it again to play it, or switch to playing on one tap in Settings. Tap the stock to draw, and tap a suit on the picker after an eight. Pass, Keep it, Next hand and Scores appear beside your name plate when they apply. Undo, Hint, the sort button (it reads By suit or By rank) and Menu sit on a wooden board below the table on a phone held upright, and at the lower left beside the table on wider screens.
• Keyboard: the arrow keys move along your hand and Enter or Space picks or plays the card in focus. D draws, P passes, N deals the next hand, U undoes, H shows a hint, S sorts your hand and Escape clears a pick. On the suit picker, C, D, S and H (or 1 to 4) name clubs, diamonds, spades or hearts.
• Restart in the toolbar starts a new game. Menu starts a new game, changes your friends’ level, how many friends play, the scoring, the drawing rule, the house rules, how you play a card and your friends’ speed in Settings, and shows your statistics and the rules. The toolbar also has pause, help, optional sound and fullscreen.