Have you ever imagined waking up on a gray, foggy day, finding out that you are not in your home, but in a mental asylum? You look into a blurred, cracked, shattered mirror and a stranger looks back at you. Who am I? Where am I? Who can I trust – and who is the enemy? One thing is for sure: I want to get out of here. One mistake is enough and all is lost… but I will take my team with me. Considering the rules, Fragmented can be called a light party game, while the theme is dark and horror with players fumbling in the dark among traps.
Fragmented is an easy to learn but still deep card game in which players hold their cards turned towards the other players. We can see everyone’s cards except ours. Every player is a member of a team (red or blue) and we know everyone’s aligment – we just don’t know who we are. We are holding our very lives in our hands and if we choose poorly, we die… along with our entire team.
We are forced to discard and play cards, so the game keeps up tension the whole time. Moreover, sometimes there can be a player with a black card. The others must treat this player as if they were walking on eggshells, as playing the black character card means this player alone wins the game.
What can we do to win? Gather as much information about our cards as we can! We must try to figure out who we are, then make an escape plan, helping our teammates to learn about their cards. Also, we can gain the trust of our opponents and eliminate them with a bluff.
Strengths
- card game: low costs, few assets, simple preparation
- high replayability
- the rules can be explained in 2 minutes
- unique, unusual mechanismegyedi, szokatlan mechanika
- dark party game with creepy atmosphere
Info
| Designer | István Szauer |
| Artwork (prototype) | István Szauer |
| Publisher | – |
| Release date | – |
Designer’s note
Hanabi is a well-known cooperative game in which players hold their cards visible to others and their communication is limited. Fragmented follows a similar concept but with team play, so the option to eliminate the opponents becomes a tactic, a bluffing trickery. We don’t know who to trust, but we cannot take blinds risks either, so we must place our fate in the hands of our sixth sense. Both the fumbling among the unknown cards and the dark theme provides the game with a paranoid atmosphere.
The game was created on a sleepless night and it hasn’t changed much since the get go. Thanks to its gripping atmosphere, it had become the addictive tool of entertainment that you can never get bored of in many forest schools and boot camps. The cards – on the demand of German exchange students who wanted to join the Hungarian children in their fun – had been translated into German as well.