GAP Card game Review. No we do not mind at all!

 Welcome to 2024. 

Here at GeeksVsGeeks we hope you have had a great time gathered with family and friends around the table enjoying food, drinks, a good conversation and of course some games together. During our holiday times we were given the opportunity to try out some new games ourselves, and one of the games was sent to us was GAP by FunBot and Arcane Wonders, which has now the honor of being our first reviewed product in 2024.

What is GAP?

GAP is a card game for 2-6 people, aged 8 and up that plays over multiple short rounds with a winner often declared within 10 -20minutes. The game is a trick-taking card game of sorts but with a twist. As it is not about the point or card totals of a suit or number but rather the difference between your highest and lowest suit scores that gives you your point. The "gap" in between them too if you will. 

Gameplay

GAP is a lightweight card game that can surprisingly (pleasantly I might add) supports up to 6 people. Each round you deal a number of cards to each player depending on the group size.  2-4 players = 6 cards. 5-6 players = 5 cards per player.

After the cards have been dealt you put the remainder of the stack in the middle of the table and deal 4 remaining cards from the top of the deck face up on the table.

At this point the players keep their hands hidden and, on their turn, (clockwise) they must play one card from their hand placing it face up on the table in front of themselves. Then the card is compared to the open cards in the middle of the table to see if there is a match. If one or more cards have the same number then all those cards, regardless of their color, will be added to the players space in front of them.

If no number match, the player checks the adjacent numbers of the card, to help the players the adjacent choices are actually printed on the card below the big number. For instance, for a 7 the adjacent numbers are 6 and 8. You will take one of the higher and one of the lower numbers if available. If only one of those is there, you only take that one. You do not take multiples of the same number as when you match the number of your card. 

If there are no matched for the player then the card stays with the open face cards in the middle of the table, raising the number of total available card. From here, and this is important, as a player you sort the card you took by color and leave them face open and staggered on the table for all to see. If there are less the 4 cards left on the table near the stack, add more from the stack to fill it back up to 4. 

Players keep taking turns clockwise until everyone played all the cards from their hands.

Now the round is over it is time to score, this is done by taking the total number of cards you have the most of and subtract the total number of cards you have the least of. if you do not have any of a color, then disregard those in this.  If some stacks are equal in size, you add them together. for instance, if my biggest stack is 6 cards, and my lowest is 2 my score is 4. But if there are two stacks of 2 cards and there are no lower stacks, my score is only 2. (Because 2+2 =4). Vice versa this can also happen for the stacks that are the biggest. So be careful in what colors you collect. 

You keep playing rounds until a player hits the set point total for the game (15-30 or 70 points). It is possible more than one player has this of course, and then the player with the highest scores is the victor.

Each round flows really well, but there are often small pauses for a player to think about their next move. It is a little hard to think ahead before your turn because often someone else will snatch up what you are looking for or pull down a new card from the stack that is not favorable to you.

What we found sneaky is the way that the setup messes with your brain a little, with the colorful and simplistic card design the feel of the game is very UNO like , despite its vast difference in rules and gameplay. But this type of thinking tricked most of us, especially in the first view rounds in the wrong tactics when it came to collecting cards. You match numbers to grab cards, but you really just should worry about the total of card in a certain color for the scoring. It is all to easy to all of a sudden end up with the wrong color card in your collection that causes valuable points to be wiped out in an instance.

Despite that, the game is not a deep-thinking game, and it allowed us to have fun, chit chat, grab a drink etc. without feeling we lost our place in the game or messed with the flow of it. Making it a great game for quickplay, as a warmup game or even in between other games.

Presentation.

GAP is a small game that comes in a small box easy to transport with you to a friend's house, on travel or to your favorite pub etc. The cards have boring gray backsides, but they just hide the beautiful shiny foiled color side of the cards. The designs are simplistic, but each suit is easy to recognize, and the colors are shiny pastels making them pleasant to look at. *Please note that I am not sure how well they work for someone with color blindness, it is possible there are issues there, but again I am not able to compare that with certainty. The rulebook is a super tiny, one page, printed on both sides getting to the point quickly and with good visual and descriptive explanations of the rules. The age setting for the game seems spot with the 8+ because if you can count and recognize numbers you should be able to play this game. 

 

Final Thoughts.

GAP is an incredible easy to learn game with a fun twist on the trick taking game. The mechanic of using numbers to match but getting scored by colors of the stacks, or rather the difference in stack sizes, makes it easy to get caught up in your strategy and have your plans fall apart in front of your eyes even last card played keeping things fun and exciting. The small size and quick gameplay definitely make this game a great addition to our travel game when going traveling or out to eat somewhere.  Now only if we could get a waterproof deck....

About the writer: DadGeek (Rob) is the co-founder of GeeksVsGeeks. He is a product of the eighties and never let go of his geek interest and hobbies no matter how often someone told him to stop. His love for gaming and all things geeks has been part of his parenting style and permeates throughout the whole family. A family of Geeks vs Geeks