Power Vacuum

Power Vacuum is a trick-taking game with a bonkers theme – competitive appliances – and a jolt of electric interaction.

The game’s setting couldn’t be sillier: we’re all household appliances trying to take the place of the old boss, the now-defunct vacuum cleaner. As is the way with trick-takers, everyone has a hand of cards and when the starting player leads a card, you must follow suit if you can – there is one exception we’ll come to. The cards are numbered 1-9 and one suit is trump, which means it beats anything else – except that exception we mentioned.

The long-term goal is not actually to win tricks though. Winning isn’t bad because you can either claim a point (-thematically speaking, this is power) or reserve a card for the next round, essentially crafting your hand to some degree rather than just taking what you’re given by chance. Better still is playing the lowest-ranked card into a trick: now you can look at the board and manipulate where the power supply is going, by moving one end of the ‘power cord’ to a different appliance section, and funnelling power along it.

Why are you moving power around? For two reasons. One is that you are one of the sections, and when the round ends you’ll collect all the power gathered there. The other is that you – and everyone – has a hidden Agenda card with two appliances on it, and at the start of any turn you can flip it over as a sort of bid, where you’re gambling that the appliance at the top will end the round with most power, and the one at the bottom will end with the least. You can also choose not to bid, of course, but getting your bid right is an avenue to points.

The exception mentioned earlier is the Spy suit. It loses to most cards but it beats trumps, so will win any trick with a trump in it. The backs of the cards match their suits – so you can see what opponents have – but beware, the Spy cards have ‘fake’ backs, pretending to be something else. The first player to reach forty points is the winner (the game lets you cash in ten points for a statue piece, so there’s also the fun of ‘building a statue’ to be had)