Agent 299 is a great game I was introduced to at GameholeCon – it takes a little strategy, a little memory, and a little deck. Seriously, the whole game is 10 cards, 9 if you exclude the rules. It’s a pocket card game!
It’s also a game of the rarer sort, where you don’t look at your own cards. Cards are instead laid out face down, split evenly between the players, with the leftover card (in a 2- or 4-player game) face down in the middle. Who goes first is up to you to decide – we flipped a coaster – but whoever that is gets the rules card, which doubles as a First Player marker. Starting with them and working around the table, each player must perform an Interrogation. This can work one of two ways: firstly, by peeking at one face-down card in front of another player, and swapping one of their own cards (face-up or face-down) for any one of that player’s. Alternatively, in a 2- or 4-player game you may instead peek at the card in the middle and swap it with any card.
After all players have performed an Interrogation, the person with the First Player card must flip one of their cards face-up. Some of these have abilities that are usable once revealed, but only for so long as they’re in front of you… and again, face-up cards can be stolen! (Ok, swapped for, but if you’re getting a Blown Cover worth negative 3 points – and nothing else – for your super useful ability card… it’s not exactly an agreeable trade.)
The game ends when the active player can’t perform an Interrogation (everyone else’s cards are all face-up) or a Disclosure (all of their cards are face-up and they don’t have Secret Documents, which would let them skip this step), at which point scores are tallied from the cards you have in front of you. Check them all – most cards only score when face-up, but the Blackmail card gives you a 2-point bonus if you have it face-down at the end of the game. In the case of a tie, the winner is whoever has the Top Secret Documents card face-up… or, failing, that, the Secret Documents card face-up, or failing that, the Blackmail card, regardless of where its face is. It’s a very thorough hierarchy.
I like this game a lot, mostly for how portable it is – I’ve actually taken to keeping it in my phone case, in case the opportunity for a game arises. And don’t they always?
