The next entry to our 3rd Casual Gameplay Design Competition is a game by Matt Slaybaugh and Joe Versoza.

An anagram of "replay", Parley is an original card game conceived and created explicitly and exclusively for this competition.

The game is a simulation of medieval diplomacy. It is a unique card game against a computer opponent with 9 levels of increasing difficulty and complexity. Its origins are in a variant of the traditional card game, War, in which each player has two stacks of cards instead of just one, and is able to choose from which stack to draw a card.

The deck is unique, however, in that the suits are based on Rochambeau, although instead of Rock-Paper-Scissors, Parley uses Water-Wood-Fire (Fire burns Wood, Water douses Fire, Wood floats on Water). Two additional suits (total of 5) are Air and Earth; Air beats Water, Wood, and Fire; and Earth is beaten by any of the other four suits.

The ranks also differ from traditional playing cards. To keep it simple there are only five: Queen, Duke, Knight, Spy, and Page. The ranks are hierarchical with Queen at the top and Page at the bottom, and higher ranking cards beat any lower-ranking card. But there is a twist in that a Spy of any suit can beat a Queen of any suit.

Update: Card rank is determined first, suit second.

Matt Slaybaugh is the designer of Frog and Vine, a collection of 4 parlor games comprising one entry to our 2nd game design competition, as well as the Escape to Obion series of Flash point-and-click games.

As usual, please provide your feedback and constructive criticism in the comments for the game designers.

Play Parley

We will return with more replay later today!

Note: All comments originally posted here have been moved to the Parley review page. Please use that page to post your comments and questions about the game. Thank you!