The River Rats hold all the wealth—but can you work together to drive them into debt?
What Is River Rats?
River Rats is a cooperative poker-based game for 1 to 4 players, ages 10 and up, and takes about 20–30 minutes to play. It’s currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, with a pledge level of €15 (about $17USD) for a copy of the game; there’s also a €43 ($49USD) tier that includes a playmat and poker chips. Although you don’t need to know how to play poker to play River Rats, knowing the ranks of the different hands makes it easier so you don’t have to keep consulting the player aid.
River Rats was designed by Mathijs Jansen and Robin Stokkel and published by Four Suit Studio, with illustrations by Rixt Heerschop.
New to Kickstarter? Check out our crowdfunding primer.
River Rats Components
Note: My review is based on a prototype copy, so it is subject to change and may not reflect final component quality, though it should be pretty close.
The components are pretty simple: a 54-card poker deck (including 2 jokers), along with two player aid cards, in a regular card tuckbox with a small rules booklet. You can pick red or blue for the card backs.
River Rats is the sort of game that you could play with just a regular poker deck as long as you have all the rules, but the custom deck is really fun. The illustrations by Rixt Heerschop show a variety of crew members on the cruise ship doing all sorts of activities—some of them seem to be engaged in sabotage, while others are at their stations. There are bartenders, mechanics, performers, janitors, cooks, and more, all different animals.
How to Play River Rats
You can download a copy of the rulebook here.
The Goal
The goal of the game is to drive two River Rats into debt (accumulating at least 5 debt on each of them).
Setup
Here’s the initial setup for the game:
Each player chooses an Ace and places it in front of them. (For the first play, you can skip this.)
Take the Kings, shuffle them, and draw 2 at random: these are the River Rats, your opponents. Place one face up and one face down in the center of the play area.
Set the Joker cards nearby, face-down, with the Joker’s Prediction card next to them.
Shuffle all unused cards—including unused Kings and Aces—together as a draw deck.
Each player draws 2 cards for their private hands.
Reveal 3 cards face up to form the market.
Here’s the setup for each round:
Reveal 5 cards next to the River Rats, and then place 2 more cards face-down. These will form the River Rat’s hand.
Draw one card and place it by the Joker’s Prediction card; this also serves as the initial debt for the hand.
Activate the River Rat’s ability, if any. (For your first game, don’t use River Rat abilities.)
Gameplay
During the game, players are not allowed to reveal information about the cards in their hands, though they can discuss general strategy with each other.
On your turn, you either draw and play, or use a joker.
Draw and Play
Draw cards until you have a hand of 3, either from the face-up market or from the draw deck. If the market has fewer than 3 cards, refill from the draw deck.
Then, play a card from your hand into the collective hand, below the River Rat’s hand. You may use its suit action, or your player power if the card played matches your character’s suit.
Suit actions are:
- Club: Add a card from your hand face up to the market. (The market can hold up to 6 face-up cards, but you only refill up to 3.)
- Diamond: Swap another card in the collective hand with a card from your hand.
- Heart: Increase debt by adding the top card of the draw deck to the debt area (face down).
- Spade: Discard a card from your hand or the market, refilling the market if needed.
Player powers are:
- Club: Add up to 2 cards from your hand to the market.
- Diamond: Swap another card in the collective hand with a card from the market.
- Heart: You may reveal a card in the River Rat’s hand, and then decide whether to increase debt.
- Spade: Discard any number of cards from your hand or the market, refilling the market if needed.
Use a Joker
If you have any jokers available, you may play a joker to the collective hand as your turn. The joker counts as any value, any suit. Only one joker may be used per hand.
Round End
The round ends when the collective hand has 5 cards in it, and then you resolve.
First, check the Joker’s Prediction: if your hand meets the prediction, flip a joker face up—it is now available for future hands.
Then, reveal the River Rat’s hand: their hand consists of the King card itself, the 5 face-up cards, and the 2 newly revealed cards. Determine their best 5-card hand, and compare it to the players’ collective hand. River Rats win ties.
If the players win, place all of the debt for this hand face-down on the River Rat. If it has accumulated 5 debt, you’ve defeated it! The first time this happens, discard the River Rat’s debt, turn the River Rat sideways, and activate the River Rat defeat bonus (based on its suit). Reveal the second River Rat.
If the River Rat wins, add the debt to the player debt area. If you’ve accumulated 5 debt, you lose the game!
Clean up for the next round: discard both the collective hand and the River Rat’s hand (except for the River Rats themselves). Any jokers that were used are removed from the game. Then start a new round setup.
Game End
The game ends when either the players accumulate 5 debt and lose, or when both River Rats have accumulated 5 debt and the players win.
Variants
There are a few additional rules that come into play for a solo game, and there are also some tweaks for advanced or expert mode if you want to make things more difficult—for instance, adding more face-down cards to the River Rat’s hand, and changing up the way jokers work.
Why You Should Play River Rats
I’m not great at poker. I know the rules, the ranking of the hands, and roughly how the odds work out. But, as they say, poker is really more about playing the players and not playing the cards—and that’s where I don’t have the experience. I’m not great at knowing when to bluff, nor am I good at telling when others are bluffing.
Poker as a cooperative game, though: that changes the equation! You’re still trying to “read” the other players because communication is limited, but now you’re working together to puzzle things out. Earlier this year I got to play The Gang, another cooperative poker game released last year by Thames & Kosmos: that one uses Texas Hold ’em poker rules, but all the players are trying to figure out the relative ranking of their hands without revealing their cards. With each successive card added to the community hand, players have a chance to reevaluate their ranking, and the goal is to have the final ranking be correct when everyone reveals their hands.
River Rats has a different approach: there’s no community hand because you and the River Rats don’t share any cards in common. Instead, you and the other players are building a single hand together, manipulating the cards that are available in the hopes of pulling off a win. You’re still building poker hands, but you aren’t really playing poker. It’s more like you’re cheating at poker. That’s okay, though, because the River Rats are even bigger cheaters.
First, they simply have a bigger hand: not only do they have a hand of seven cards already (compared to your five), but they also get to throw themselves into the mix. The first River Rat always has at least a King, and when you defeat them and move to the second one, now they start each hand with a pair of Kings. If you’re using player powers and each of you has an Ace as a character, that means in a 4-player game the Kings are the highest cards in the deck!
Each hand, you’re trying to figure out what the River Rats might have in their hand: what are the odds that they have a straight, or a flush? Did we use up a lot of diamonds in the last hand? Oh, the Joker’s Prediction card is a Queen so that’s at least one Queen out of the way. And then you’re trying to build your own poker hand with very limited information about what your teammates might have.
The suit powers can all be very useful but it can depend on the timing. Adding more cards to the market is a way to pass cards to your teammates and signal what you might want them to play, but discarding cards lets you refresh the market and take a gamble on what else might come up. Adding to the debt is raising the stakes for that hand—brings you closer to defeating the River Rats if you win, but can be really risky!
The other wrinkle is earning jokers: you only get jokers if you match the joker’s prediction, which is determined by a random card. If the prediction is for a straight, but the River Rats hand is already at a flush, then you have to make a difficult choice: do you try to get the joker, knowing that you’ll lose this hand, or do you try to get something better than a flush but perhaps give up on the chance to get a joker? Having a wild card up your sleeve for a future turn is a huge advantage if you can get it, but that’s only helpful if you get a future turn!
I’d seen River Rats come across some social media feeds and was initially caught by the fun artwork, and I’m really glad I got a chance to try it out. It’s a clever twist on poker, and it really can feel like a crew sneaking around to pull off a high-stakes heist.
For more information or to make a pledge, visit the River Rats Kickstarter page!
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Disclosure: GeekDad was loaned a prototype of this game for review purposes.
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