Last Card

Setup

Two to four players. Each is dealt seven cards from a 108-card deck, and one card is turned face up to start the discard pile. The rest becomes the draw pile.

The deck holds four colours — red, blue, green and yellow — numbered 0 to 9, plus the action cards below, plus Wilds and Wild Draw Fours that belong to no colour.

How to play

On your turn you must play a card that matches the top of the discard pile by COLOUR or by NUMBER, or play any action card matching its colour, or play a Wild. If you cannot, you draw one card from the pile; if that card can be played you may play it immediately, otherwise your turn ends.

Skip: the next player loses their turn. Reverse: the direction of play turns around — at two players it acts as a Skip, so you play again. Draw Two: the next player takes two cards and forfeits their turn. Wild: you name the colour that must be matched next. Wild Draw Four: you name the colour and the next player takes four cards, but you may only play it when you hold NO card in the colour currently in play.

When you play your second-to-last card — leaving you with one — you must tap 'Last card!'. Forget, and you draw two as a penalty. The button appears the moment you are eligible.

The shuffle happens on our servers, not on your phone, so nobody's client can see or arrange the deck. If the draw pile runs out, the discard pile is reshuffled back into it and a Wild that was played reverts to a Wild rather than staying the colour it was named as.

Controls

Your hand runs along the bottom of the screen and scrolls sideways when it gets long. Tap a card to play it. A card that is not legal right now is refused by the table and nothing is played, so a wrong tap costs you nothing but the moment.

The draw pile and the discard pile sit together in the middle of the table. Tap the draw pile when you have nothing to play. If the card you draw can be played, your turn stays open: tap that card to play it, or tap Keep the card to hold it and end your turn. While you are deciding, it is the only card you may play.

Playing a Wild or a Wild Draw Four opens a four-colour chooser. Nothing reaches the server until you pick one, so backing out of the chooser costs you nothing.

The LAST CARD! button appears above your hand the moment you become eligible to call it, and it is a separate tap from playing the card. That separation is the point: the call is what the penalty is about, not the card.

Every opponent's seat shows how many cards they hold. You never see the cards themselves — hands are hidden on the server, not merely covered up on your screen — but the count is always visible to everyone.

The table does not mirror in Arabic. The draw pile sits on the same side of the screen for both players in both languages, because a card table is a physical object and does not flip.

House rules

The host chooses these in the lobby before the game starts, and they apply to everyone at the table.

Stacking: answer a Draw Two with another Draw Two to pass the penalty on, and it accumulates. Progressive draws: extends stacking so a Draw Two can be stacked onto a Draw Four and the other way round. Seven-Zero: playing a 7 swaps your hand with the NEXT player — not one you choose, which is how some tables play it — and playing a 0 rotates every hand one seat in the direction of play. Jump-In: anyone holding a card identical in both colour and number to the top of the pile may play it out of turn, and play resumes from them.

Scoring

Last Card keeps no running score. One round is the whole game: the first player to empty their hand wins outright, and nothing is added up afterwards.

What is scored is your profile. Online, a win pays 20 points, a draw 7 and a loss 3 — so playing out a match you are losing is still worth more than walking away from it.

Last Card also moves your rating, the single ladder shared by every game here except the two arcade boards. Rating only moves in a match between exactly two people, so a three- or four-handed table pays points and stats and leaves your rating where it was.

Practice games against the bot and games with everyone on one phone score nothing at all: no points, no rating, no leaderboard, no stats.

In a two-player match, leaving forfeits it and so does a turn left unplayed for two minutes; both count as a loss, which is why the app asks you to confirm before you go. At three or four players the table carries on: whoever leaves is recorded as a loss when the match ends, and a turn left unplayed is played for you so nobody else is kept waiting.

Winning

The first player to empty their hand wins the round and the game. If you are left holding one card without having tapped 'Last card!', the two-card penalty is applied at once — nobody has to catch you — and play carries on.

Against the bot, or with everyone on one phone, nothing is scored — no points, no rating, no leaderboard. Online games against real people score for both.

Tips

Keep a Wild back. A hand with no playable card and no Wild is a hand that draws, and drawing is how a two-card lead disappears.

Count colours rather than cards. If an opponent has passed on green twice, green is what strands them.

A Draw Four is worth more as a threat than as a play — it is the only card that cannot be answered under the default rules.