Sprint, Snap, Score — rules
1-round card game for 2-5 players, standard 52-card deck. (v1.1 supports 2 players — vs AI with three difficulty levels, or hot-seat with a friend on the same device.)
Setup
- Deal 6 cards to each player.
- Make a draw pile (face down) and a discard pile (face up, starting with one card).
- Pick a starting player.
Matches you can play
- Sets: 2-4 cards of the same rank (suits can vary).
- Runs: 3+ consecutive ranks of the same suit. (Aces are HIGH only: Q-K-A is a valid run, but K-A-2 is not.)
Your turn
- Draw 1 card — from the top of the draw pile (hidden) or the top of the discard pile (visible).
- Build matches (optional) — lay down any valid sets or runs from your hand.
- Each card can only be used in one match per turn.
- You must have at least 1 card left in hand after building. You can't lay down every card.
- If you have exactly 2 cards, you can't lay them down as a pair (that would empty your hand).
- Replacement draw: each time you lay down a match, immediately draw replacement cards from the deck equal to the size of the match (a 3-card run = 3 replacements). Rewards productive turns and keeps the hand from deadlocking at 1-2 cards. Partial draw if the deck is short — and emptying the deck this way triggers the final-round counter.
- Discard 1 card — face-up to the discard pile.
- If you have exactly 1 card in hand at the start of the discard step, you skip discarding and end the turn with that 1 card.
End of the round
When the draw pile is empty, everyone takes one more turn, then the round ends.
Scoring
Match scoring is triangular — each additional card in a match is worth more than the last (1 + 2 + 3 + … + N for a match of N cards). Bigger matches escalate.
| Match size | Points |
|---|
| 2 cards (pair / 2-card thing) | +3 |
| 3 cards (3-of-a-kind / 3-card run) | +6 |
| 4 cards (4-of-a-kind / 4-card run) | +10 |
| 5-card run | +15 |
| 6-card run | +21 |
| Penalty | Points |
|---|
| Card left in hand at round end | −1 per card |
Highest score wins.
AI difficulty levels
- Apprentice — random draws, lays any match it sees, random discards. Great for learning the rules.
- Standard — takes the discard pile card only when it completes a match. Lays everything down. Discards your highest card to dodge the end-of-round penalty.
- Strategist — holds pairs hoping to grow them into 3-of-a-kind for more points. Tries not to feed the opponent useful cards.