1 Introduction and history

Survive the Flood is a single-player, UNO-based strategy card game. The history behind "Survive the Flood UNO", or just "Survive the Flood" as I more commonly call it, is short, very short. Because I almost never have anyone to play UNO with, I devised a way to play UNO in a single-player mode. It plays a lot like it with only a few exceptions - never run out of cards, and cycle through the draw deck some number of times. When I did play the game, when no one won the game after a long time using up all cards in the draw pile, the used ones (except the top card) got reshuffled and reused. I liked this and thought of it being an important aspect of the game. I thought of many difficulty settings as well, of which alter the chances of winning due to slight rule differences. The name comes from the goal. You must go through at least 5 draw decks without running out of cards. I thought of a flood at the time (since the flood of 1997 in the eastern part of my state (ND) was headlines at the time when I thought of the game). You would "survive" the flood when you went through all 5 draw decks without emptying your hand. You wouldn't "survive" if your hand ran dry. I, at first, used regular UNO cards, but most of the time, they couldn't be found and there were at least 3 decks of regular cards available. I found a way to allow for the use of regular cards in this game as well.

2 What is needed

You only need one of these two things in order to play:

1. The complete set of 108 UNO cards.
2. The complete set of 54 standard playing cards (both jokers are required).

I tend to prefer the second option. The card images (shown at the top) are of the standard playing card set which are a bit more confusing to get at first. I'll explain everything.

3 The standard rules

Survive the Flood is played almost exactly like UNO. Start by drawing 7 cards and another for the discard pile. The 7 cards are your hand. If the card you get from the discard is a wild card, choose the starting color. If a draw-X card, draw that many more cards. You place a card in your hand that matches either the number shown or the color (suit) shown on the discard pile. If the top card on the discard pile has a blue 6 (or a 6 of clubs), you can place either a blue card (any clubs card), or a 6 (of any color or suit). The exception are the wild cards, of which can be used at any time. In Survive the Flood, draw-X and wild cards are actually helpful rather than harmful. Usage restrictions on these depend on the difficulty setting. The reverse card plays like any ordinary number card. When you can't play any of your cards, you must draw from the draw pile. In Survive the Flood, which is solo, you keep drawing until you can play a card. You must never draw from the draw pile when you can do something (easy difficulty has one exception to this). If you accidentally do, you must place 3 special cards to the discard pile below the top-most card. If there aren't enough special cards, use standard ones in replacement but the special ones take priority. When all cards from the draw pile are used up and you still must draw a card, remove the top-most card in the discard pile and set it aside. Reshuffle the other cards and make these the new draw pile.

The key difference between normal UNO and Survive the Flood is that you must never run out of cards in your hand. If you run out, you lose. This makes the use of special cards rather strange as well. "Draw two" (the king) is used to draw two cards and can help prevent you from running out of cards and help you to win. For wild cards, choose a color (suit) that you do not have in your hand, another oddity. If you have red, yellow, and blue (clubs, spades, and hearts), have the wild card be used to choose green (or diamonds) forcing you to have to draw. The ultimate goal is to go through 5 to 8 complete draw-decks, depending on your difficulty (and preferences if you prefer more) and the type of deck used, though, the more reshuffles, the harder it is to win and the longer the game lasts.

For the standard playing card deck, there are some differences. Aces, 2 through 10, and jacks are like the ordinary cards. Queens function as the "wild" cards and kings function as the "draw two" cards. Like normal draw two cards, they can only be used when the suit matches (that is, you can only use the king of hearts on any hearts card (or when "hearts" is called from using a wild card). The jokers function as the "wild draw four" cards. For the jokers, they can be used at any time, even if the colors don't match (that is, you can use the black joker on a red 6).

4 The difficulty settings

There are 3 actual difficulty settings, of which slightly modify the rules and change the chance of winning.

4.1 Easy

Easy follows the same standard rules only drawing cards and wild cards can be kept until you need them. These do not count as part of your hand though and thus, if they're the only ones remaining, you lose. For example, if you draw these cards for your hand initially (the discard doesn't matter, except if it's a draw card):

The queen of hearts (a wild) and the king of diamonds (a draw two) are not part of your hand and can be kept indefinitely. If you use up the other 5 cards and still have these, you will lose the game. As a tip, set these to the side and when the condition grows despirate, use one of the special cards. With easy, you are almost guarenteed to win. To win, you must go through 4 draw-pile decks (reshuffle them 3 times) if using the regular cards or 2 draw-pile decks (reshuffle them once) if using UNO cards, and do this without running out of non-special cards (the queens, kings, and jokers are the special ones). For the case of drawing when you could have done something (special cards don't count, even if they could be used (thus, you can safely draw when the top-most card is a 5 of clubs and you have a king of clubs, but that only applies to these special cards)), you must discard 3 cards from your actual hand as before, but never special cards. If you have 3 or fewer non-special cards, you lose and thus, be careful with drawing.

4.2 Medium

Medium is my favorite difficulty setting. It plays a lot like easy, only the special cards are part of your hand and they must be used if they're the only things you can use but, like easy, they can be used at any time. The draw two cards, however, must be played using the same color (or suit) as usual. This is about as close to regular UNO as it gets. To win, you must go through 6 draw-pile decks (5 reshuffles) for standard cards and 3 draw-pile decks (2 reshuffles) for UNO cards and without running out of cards in your hand (special cards are part of your hand in medium difficulty so you can have only these remaining without losing, unlike easy).

4.3 Hard

Hard is similar to medium, but all special cards you get must be used as the first thing. You can spare your draw-two cards by having the color (or suit) not match those you have. That is, if you draw a wild card (a queen of any suit), you must use it right away. Jokers are the same as well. If you draw multiple special cards in one, they all must be used, but in any order. If you get a wild draw-four, you must call the color (or suit) first before drawing in hard mode. To win, you must go through 8 draw-pile decks (7 reshuffles) for standard cards and 4 draw-pile decks (3 reshuffles) using regular UNO cards without running out of cards. Special cards are part of your hand (unlike easy) and with hard the way it is, you won't be having these often.

4.4 Master

One new difficulty setting, lacking details and testing, is master. Until tested, it's not an official difficulty setting. It's only recently thought of (as of Aug 10, 2007) and details haven't been thought through yet, let alone being tested. In general, however, it involves the use of two decks, but only half the suits (or a standard UNO deck reduced to two colors with half the special cards available, leaving behind 54 cards). You'll still get 54 cards, but all cards will be of only two suits (or colors). This drastically limits choices and makes forming strategies highly important. Similar rules to easy apply in terms of special cards (they are not part of the hand and can be used at any time). This feature should be optional. By allowing them to be part of the hand, the game becomes incredibly difficult with an extremely low chance of winning, although there is still a chance. I'd say about 6 rounds of standard cards is about right (4 if you use the harder version). A derrivative would be the use of 3 suits, of which would be much easier (with 3/4 the special cards if using UNO cards).

4.5 Round count adjustments

You may, optionally, increase the number of required rounds for a longer game at a slightly increased difficulty, but the number must never be lower than that required by your main intended difficulty. If you wanted 30 rounds for a long game (spanning about 3 hours or so on a standard card deck), go ahead if you want.

5 Example round

To further explain, let's consider an example round using the standard card deck. The card with a border around it is the card at the top of the discard pile. We'll do a medium-level game.

5.1 Starting out

Here, an 8 of diamonds is the card for the discard pile. You can play any 8 or diamonds card. There's a 2 and a king of this suit. Since you can't change the suit as you don't have another 2, both will end up getting played. It's often better to play the draw card first, but you may have other preferences. We'll add the king of diamonds to the discard pile and draw two more cards.

5.2 Making strategic decisions

Upon the draw, we get a 4 of diamonds and a jack of hearts. Now it's time to think. Note that we have a 4 of clubs card. We need a bit of strategy. We could play the 4 of diamonds then the 4 of clubs and ace of clubs, or we can play the 4 of diamonds then the 2 of diamonds. It is wisest to have the most cards in your hand as possible and getting 20 cards, even with the standard deck, isn't unusual. However, note that we also have the queen of hearts. You can use a wild card to call the same suit as needed and with medium difficulty, playing it is required before drawing. We'll play the 4 of diamonds, the 2 of diamonds, then the queen of hearts calling diamonds. Since we now no longer have diamonds, we need to draw. Before drawing, we have this:

5.3 About drawing

5 cards in hand is rather low, but since we can't discard anything, it's time to draw. The suit on queens (wilds) doesn't matter. The first draw gives a 10 of clubs. We can't play that, since it's not of diamonds, so we draw again and obtain a 3 of spades. That can't be played so we draw again but this time, we get something, a 5 of diamonds. After all the drawing, we have this:

Since we can play the 5 of diamonds, play it right away. However, we don't have either a 5 or a diamond card. With nothing else possible, it's time to draw again. The first draw gives a king of clubs, of which can't be played yet. The next draw gives a 6 of hearts followed by a 3 of clubs and a 5 of spades. Remember that, in Survive the Flood, you want a big hand and the bigger, the better. After the draws, we have this:

Since the 5 of spades can be played (same number, different suit), it must be played. Now we need to plan out the distribution so we use the fewest cards. What I often do is separate all cards by suit then by number. For spades, we have a 9 and a 3. Ask yourself, what way can you use the least cards possible or has the least risk? Do we have a 9 or a 3 of another suit? There's the 3 of clubs but there's no other 9's. Since we have no 9's, we play that card last. That is, we play the 3 of spades first then the 9 of spades. Now nothing can be done so it's back to the draw deck. After the plays but before drawing, we have this:

5.4 Joker on a draw

With nothing else left to do, we draw again. The first draw gives the black joker. Since it's the only thing that can be done, it must be played. For best strategy, call the suit as needed after drawing. We draw 4 cards and get a 2 and jack of clubs, a 4 of spades, and a 6 of diamonds. Now we need to formulate a strategy. Since the joker is also wild, we need to do some thinking. For reference, our hand looks like this after playing the joker.

There's a card of every suit! Think through it like as explained in section 5.3 near the end. We had few diamonds beforehand so let's start with that. There's a 6 of diamonds, but a 6 of hearts. There are no other diamonds so right away this looks good. Spades was also low. There's the 4 of spades but also the 4 of clubs. There's a lot of clubs cards and quite a few of hearts. It seems like we want the 6 of diamonds or the 4 of spades as the last card. Either way is equally good... or so it seems. What suit has the fewest cards used so far (in the discard and hand)? This often doesn't affect my decision, but it's something to look at, especially when the draw pile is still quite full and a lot of a particular suit (or color) has been played. In our example, we'll call hearts then put the 6 of hearts then the 6 of diamonds down.

Yep, it's back to drawing again. The 9 of hearts is the first card drawn which makes you think you got a lucky draw, another thing that could also be considered in the previous episode. It can't be played (but it would've been if the previous part involved leaving the 4 of spades last). The next draw yields the 10 of hearts. It can't be played. The queen of spades is drawn next, and since it can be played (suit doesn't matter for queens), it must be. Since it was previously diamonds and you were drawing, call diamonds and continue drawing. However, even if another card with a 6 was drawn, you now wouldn't have to play it, thanks to the queen. The next draw gives a 9 of clubs, a 10 of spades, then a jack of diamonds. Uh oh. After playing that, we have this:

5.5 Lots of cards and a tough decision to make

That's right, 14 cards! That's some big hand we've got. It would seem great to have in this game, but in some cases, it can be a little dangerous so it needs to be handled with care. Note all those clubs cards. There's 8 of them, more than half of the hand! As long as you have at least 2 other cards of a different suit having the same number as one of these, that's fine. Stock up all you want. Keep in mind that it can take a while longer to formulate strategies, but at times, even with the hard level, it's not all that troublesome. With the jack of diamonds now on the discard pile and that there's a jack of clubs and a jack of hearts, one of these two must be played. There's a lot of clubs and hearts cards, but work out the strategy as you feel. Remember to target the card that'll cause you to draw last so form a string of cards from the current position to that target card so that the target card is discarded last. You should understand the game at this point so this walkthrough will stop.

5.6 When all cards are drawn

As you play the game more, the draw pile gets thinner and thinner until no cards remain. When no cards remain, you have completed one round and for the medium difficulty, there's still 5 more rounds to go before winning. With the last discarded card left out of the reshuffling, the draw deck is refreshed. Once that is cleared, you'd have completed 2 rounds with 4 more to go.

<1>6 Tips

Here's a few tips that'll help you:

1. Think before you act. You wouldn't want to wind up seeing that you've run down to your last card from 5 remaining when it must be played.
2. Don't make haste when drawing. Check the card you draw against the top-most card on the discard pile and if it can't be played, continue drawing, but avoid going excessively fast. Just remember the penalty.
3. Keep a big hand - the bigger, the better your chance of winning, and the faster you go through draw decks (and thus rounds).
4. Keep some variety. You don't want to end up with a hand of all one color or suit without any specials as you're guarenteed to lose when this happens. Keep at least 3 of a different suit and ensure there's an intersection somewhere (such as having lots of clubs cards with both clubs and diamonds having a 7 in each).
5. If you have draw cards (kings and jokers), use these first so you can better formulate your strategy.
6. When using a wild, plan your strategy before calling the color or suit.
7. When using a wild draw-four, draw first, then call the color or suit to ensure you get the best strategy. This doesn't work with hard mode though due to a rule it has.

7 Having this game as a program

Want to try playing this game on your computer? I don't have the program at the moment, but, as of Aug 10, 2007, I have enough programming knowledge and know-how to actually program this game in full. Once I do write the program, it'd almost certainly be freeware.

Footnotes:
None

[an error occurred while processing this directive]