Night Parade

Full rules

1. Overview
2. The cards
3. Setup
4. Not a word
5. Playing a turn
6. End of the game
7. Scoring
8. Difficulty
9. Tips for beginners
10. Variants
11. Differences from Yōkai

Overview

Night Parade is a cooperative memory game: all players form one team and win or lose together. Sixteen spirits lie face down on the table in a jumble – four families, one per suit. Together you have to sort them so that the four cards of each suit lie next to each other. Nobody may say what they have seen. On your turn you secretly peek at two cards and slide one card to a new place. The only way to share what you know is to lay hint cards on the spirits. Hints are scarce, and the fewer you use, the better your score.

• Players: 2–4
• You need: one standard 52-card deck; you use only 30 of its cards (see below).

Night Parade is our own adaptation for an ordinary deck, inspired by Yōkai (Julien Griffon, 2019). It is new and not yet playtested. The hint cards are playing cards that you read with a small table, and the difficulty levels are built from the deck itself (see "Differences from Yōkai").

The cards

Put the 5s to 9s, the 10♣ and 10♦ and the jokers back in the box.

A hint card lying on a spirit says which suit that spirit could be:

A Queen always means its own suit or the next one in the circle ♠ → ♥ → ♣ → ♦ → ♠. There are 4 one-suit, 6 two-suit and 4 three-suit hints – one for every possible pair and trio of suits.

Setup

1. Spirits: shuffle the 16 spirit cards and lay them face down in a 4 × 4 square, edge to edge.
2. Hint pile: without looking, take hint cards by the table below: shuffle the 4 Jacks face down and take the number shown; do the same with the 6 two-suit hints (Queens and the two 10s) and with the 4 Kings. Shuffle the chosen cards together and put them face down beside the square as the hint pile. Put the rest back in the box unseen.

3. The player who is most afraid of ghosts begins; play goes clockwise (to the left).

Not a word

You may never tell each other anything about the spirits – not their suits, not their places. No pointing, no nodding, no "hmm" when someone reaches for a card. You may talk about the rules, whose turn it is and whether you want to end the game. Everything else goes through the hint cards.

Playing a turn

On your turn you do three things, in this order:

1. Peek at two spirits. Pick up any spirit card, look at it secretly and put it back in its place. Then do the same with a second one (you may choose it after seeing the first). They don't have to be next to each other. You may not peek at a spirit with a hint card on it.
2. Move one spirit. Take any one spirit without a hint card on it – one you just looked at or any other – and put it in a new place. The new place must touch another spirit along a full side (lined up with the grid, not only at a corner). After the move, all 16 spirits must form one connected group, linked by sides. While you lift the card the group may fall apart for a moment; that is fine as long as it is whole again when you put the card down. The square may change shape – that is the whole point.
3. Reveal or place a hint. Do one of these: - Reveal: turn the top card of the hint pile face up and put it beside the pile. All revealed hints lie spread out, so everyone can see them. - Place: take one revealed hint and lay it face up on a spirit that has no hint yet. That spirit is now locked: nobody may peek at it or move it for the rest of the game.

Place a hint only on a spirit that you believe matches it. A wrong hint is allowed, but it misleads your team and costs a point at the end.

If the hint pile is empty, you must place a revealed hint. In the rare case that no spirit can be moved without breaking the group, skip step 2.

Example: Anna and Ben play; the hint pile holds 7 cards. Anna peeks at the top left corner: the 3♣. Then she peeks at the card next to it: the A♥. She moves the A♥ to the far right end of the top row, so that it is away from the club. Then she turns up the top hint: the J♣ ("this is a club"). On his turn Ben peeks at two other cards, moves one of them and reveals another hint. On her next turn Anna peeks and moves again, and then places the J♣ on the top left corner. Now Ben knows what only Anna knew: this is a club, and it stays where it is. Clubs should gather around it.

End of the game

The game ends in one of two ways:

• Instead of taking your turn, you announce that the spirits are sorted. You may ask the others first; anyone may say they don't agree, but it is your decision.
• The last hint card is placed on a spirit.

Now turn all 16 spirits face up (leave the hint cards beside them so you can check them). You win if the four cards of each suit form one connected group, linked by sides – every card touches at least one other card of its suit, and you can walk from any card of a suit to the others without leaving that suit. If even one suit is split, the spirits are not appeased and you lose together.

Scoring

Only if you won: score your hint cards.

Example: With two players you won with 3 hints placed (all correct), 1 revealed and not placed and 3 still in the pile: 3 + 2 + 15 = 20 points – legendary. Ending the game early pays: every unrevealed hint is worth five placed ones.

Difficulty

The clock of the game is the hint pile. Every turn either reveals or places a hint, so each hint card lasts at most two turns: with 7 hints (2 players) the game lasts at most 14 turns, 7 each; with 9 hints (3 players) 18 turns, 6 each; with 10 hints (4 players) 20 turns, 5 each. In those turns you peek at up to 28, 36 or 40 cards – enough to see every spirit twice – but each of you remembers only what you saw yourself. You get exactly one move per turn, so a 2-player game has at most 14 moves to sort 16 cards, and every placed hint locks one card that can no longer move. A hint that names one suit is worth far more than one that names three.

Choose a level before you start:

For a harder game at any level, take one King more and one Jack less. These levels are a first guess – not playtested and not checked by a simulation.

Tips for beginners

• Peek where others didn't. Watch which cards your teammates look at, and look at different ones – the whole team then knows more.
• Moves are messages too. Sliding two cards next to each other says "these belong together" without a word.
• Lock an anchor early. A one-suit hint on a card near the middle gives the whole family a place to gather.
• Count the hints. Once the pile is low, every revealed hint must be placed soon – think about where before you reveal another.
• Stop in time. When you are fairly sure, end the game: each hint still in the pile is worth 5 points.

Variants

All optional – agree before you start.

• Open talk (training): you may talk about suits for the first few games, but not about places.
• Two secret neighbours: at level 3, two players each get a secret pair of suits that must touch.
• Big parade: use A–5 of each suit (20 spirits) in a 4 × 5 rectangle and add one hint of each kind.

Differences from Yōkai

In Yōkai the spirits and hints are special cards with pictures, and the higher levels use special Affinity and Objective cards. Night Parade uses playing cards: the spirits are the A–4 of each suit, the hints are the Jacks, Queens, Kings and two 10s read with the table above, and the "Neighbours" level uses a leftover two-suit hint instead of an Affinity card. The Objective-card level is left out. The rule for skipping the move when no spirit can be moved, the "Big parade" variant and the names of the score ranks are our own.