Falling

"Everybody's falling. Hit the ground last." Could this be the best theme ever?

Falling was the first real-time game from James Ernest. It's a neat filler that suits several replays to fill the time available.

One player acts as the dealer and de-facto referee. Cards are dealt round the table, which may be played in front of other players (or yourself) to affect the cards dealt to that player next turn. Ground cards lie at the bottom of the deck, and the last person to get one wins. A few other cards push and pull the cards around and act as all-purpose cancels.

It doesn't take long to grasp the strategy: while it's obvious to play Skip [turns] on yourself and Hit [extra cards] on other players, the opposite is true early on, in order to stockpile cards for the endgame. Timing the switch from stockpiling to fighting is the key to victory, which I didn't expect to find - a classic RTS mechanic in a 5-minute filler.

The game works because the dealer can resolve the timing conflicts as a neutral: without this, it could become an unholy mess. Later Ernest real-time games resolved this by playing to a tableau, which is scored at the end of the game. However, nobody will demand exact fairness in such a short, silly and pleasing game, where victory is only another plummet away.

Falling has just been re-released in a goblin-themed edition. It's exactly the same game though, and worth picking up.