How Low can you go? 2 to 6 players ages 7 and up
Go Low is a card game that the whole family can enjoy. It’s fast and easy and only needs number recognition skills to play.
Players who enjoy the card games Rack-O, Golf, and Go-Boom as well as the dice game Beat That will like this game.
Object
The Object of Go Low card game is to have the lowest score at the end of five rounds.
The Go Low Cards
The cards are numbers from 0 to 9 and then there are cards with 15 on them. Each card is worth the number of points printed on them. The 0 cards are green and the 15 are purple. The other cards share three alternating colours.
Setting Up
The set up for this game is very simple. Each player is dealt four cards that are placed face down on the table in a square in a two rows of two formation.
Playing Go Low Card Game
To start, each player chooses two cards to look at and hopefully memorize. They are not allowed to look at these cards again.
On a player’s turn she can either choose to take the top card on the discard pile or the draw pile. She can then swap it for any card in her hand or she can discard it.
When choosing to swap, she then puts the card face down in the spot where the old card was and puts the old card on the discard pile face up.
A player can replace one of the cards he looked at in the beginning of the game or one he hasn’t lookat at.
Similarly, he can replace a card that he has already replaced. For example, if he started with a 15 he could replace it with an 8 and then replace the 8 with a 3 for a better score.
Go Low
When a player thinks she has a lower score than anyone else, she calls out “Go Low” before she discards. All other players then have one more turn to try to improve their scores.
Scoring Go Low Card Game
When the last person has taken their turn, all players flip over their cards and add the numbers together to get their scores for the round. If the player who calls out Go Low has a higher score than any other player, then his score is doubles for the round. If he has tied with another player then his score is not doubled and the scores are recorded as normal.
Winning Go Low
The player with the lowest score after five rounds is the winner.
What We Like
First, we like that this game is easy. It’s great when you want to play a low energy, low strategy game. The fact that its play time is short makes if a great in between game or when you have a small window of time game.
We also like that anyone can play—it takes about 30 seconds to explain. Players of all ages can play and win, making it a great game for families with different ages.
The card are also good quality.
What We Don’t Like
First, it is a card game that comes in a standard cardboard, flip top box. I can see that it will end up in bad shape in the future. But this is nothing new or unique to Go Low itself. (Out UNO box is so bad that the flap is completely gone, and the game now lives in a Ziploc bag.)
The other thing that we don’t like is that it is repetitive but when only playing five rounds this isn’t much of a problem. However, it is not a game to be played over and over again in a row.
The Low Down of It
Go Low card game is an easy, fast game that anyone can play. But watch out: the anguish you feel at replacing a 0 with a 3 is great. Worse is the cackle of glee that the next player lets out when she picks up that 0 and puts it in her hand.
Younger kids will especially like Go Low. For a fast, easy game we recommend adding Go Low to your Family Game Shelf.
To get your copy of Go Low, shop here. Canadians can shop here for Go Low card game.
Pros: fast, easy, all ages
Cons: repetitive, cardboard box
Mom: memory skills, risk assessment
I just played this game for the first time. The rules were modified a bit to make it more interesting.
If you drew from the draw pile you had to use the card. Drawing a 15 has a complete different effect when you have to use it, rather than just discarding every 15.
With the original rules, there is not much incentive to “Go Low” except to stop other players from getting rid of bad cards. Why risk getting double points with not much of a reward? Instead, if you “Go Low” and have the lowest hand, you received negative points. So going low with 10 points results in either negative 10 or 20 points.
Fun game either way.
That would make it interesting! Thank you for sharing, we’ll have to try it that way.