The Icarus Club

About this board game

The Icarus Club is a Japanese trick-taking game for 3–5 players that plays in about 25 minutes. Set in an illegal casino run by gangsters, it turns ordinary success into a dangerous proposition: the player who wins the most money loses the game.

Before play begins, players lay out a line of cards. This line determines the lead suit for each trick, creating a shared structure that guides play throughout the game. Knowing which suit will lead is important, but the situation is not fixed.

Players can pay bribes to alter the line of cards. By changing the order that determines the lead suit, they can disrupt expectations and create opportunities to win tricks unexpectedly. The result is a trick-taking game where timing, score management, and sudden changes to the available information all matter.

• Players: 3–5
• Playing time: about 25 minutes
• Release year: 2021
• Core idea: manipulate the lead-suit line by paying bribes

The scoring objective gives The Icarus Club its distinctive tension. Collecting the most money may look like success, but it makes you the player most likely to be picked up by the police. The real winner is the player with the second-highest score, so every trick and every bribe must be considered in light of the final standings.

Following the designer’s previous game インヴァージョン (!nversion), The Icarus Club combines a familiar trick-taking foundation with a changing lead-suit system and an unusual win condition. It is a compact game of calculated interference, unexpected tricks, and carefully controlled success.