We recently came across Aura by Breaking Games that bills itself as a “casual strategy card game”. The minimalist black box with spot-gloss geometric patterns hinted about design being as much a part of the game as the rest of the components. That’s exactly what we found. Designed for up to four players, each person receives an identical deck of cards made up of five ‘suits’ represented by unique colors. Each of these suits has eight cards numbered one through eight, a wild card and an action card. Players also receive a handy reference card which will be needed to help you remember which color trumps which.
Interestingly, all cards have their suit color also on the backs so your opponents can see which suits you are holding. Starting with a hand of eight cards drawn from your shuffled deck, if you are the active player you will lay face-down between two and five cards to the center of the table. Other players, seeing the suit you played, will then lay in turn order cards from their hands to try to block/beat your card. At this point no one knows the values of the cards, just the color. To block your card, they must either play a card of the same suit but with a higher number, or play any card of that suit’s trump color (red beats purple, purple beats green, etc.). Hence the need for the reference card!
