Oh Hell! and Belote
We are happy today to present you with two classic trick taking card games from the public domain, Oh Hell! and French Belote. Oh Hell! is a traditional trick taking game with many names (Blackout, Crazy Bridge, Elevator, Riki Tiki, Up and Down the River... to name a few) and many variants. On each round, each player will bet on the number of tricks he/she can take, then try to take exactly that number of tricks during the round to maximise the points earned. But the thing is... the sum of the bids of all players cannot be exactly the number of tricks for the round, so everyone cannot make it! 🤣 Also, the first round will be played with a hand of 7 to 10 cards (depending of the number of players, from 3 up to 7 people can play together), then on the next round the hand will be one card fewer and so on until it reaches just one card, then one card more back up to the starting level. Hence the feeling of going down to hell (and back hopefully), and sometimes things go very wrong so... Oh Hell! 😉 Oh Hell! has been developed on BGA studio by marcgenesis, who previoulsy implemented the nice "wood cutting competition" abstract Logger. Thanks a lot for this new game!
Belote is a classic French card game which is one of the most played in the country. In this game, you'll work with a partner as a team to try to take the most and the best tricks in order to earn more points than the opposite team. Your first choice will be to take (or leave) an upturned card with incomplete information (only 5 of your hand of 8 cards will be visible at that point), and that choice will determine the trump suit for the rest of the game, unless no one takes it on the first turn. Then players will try to take as many tricks as possible, which needs both skill and knowing well the way your partner plays to make the best of good and bad hands. If you get both the king and queen in the trump suit, you'll also call "Belote" and "Rebelote" when playing them, to get 20 extra points. Belote is an addictive game in which a lot of pleasure comes with playing often with the same partner, and getting to understand what his next moves will be from the previous ones, then go with the flow to help and strengthen. It's also the first game on BGA where you can form teams - just like in real life - by the sitting order at the table! The first and third players to join the table will be together, and the second and fourth will be the opposite team. Of course, the table admin can take advantage of the invitation system to set the teams in advance if he is playing with friends. Belote has been implemented by Nanaki404. It's his first game created with BGA Studio, and he did a great job for a first! A big thank you for bringing this game to BGA players!