My friend and I just launched our first-ever Kickstarter today and it is LIVE on Kickstarter today at 12pm BST and wanted to share MEMO5 with this community properly, not just a "check out my game" post, but an actual breakdown of how it plays, since that feels more useful here.

 

**What is MEMO5?**  
MEMO5 is a competitive memory card game for 2–10 players. You each have 4 face-down cards in a 2×2 grid. You can only peek at 2 of them at the start. The goal is to end a round with the lowest total, but here's the twist: you can never look at your cards freely. You have to remember what's where, while other players are actively swapping, stealing, and scrambling your grid.

 

**How a turn works:**  
You draw a card and either discard it or swap it with one of your face-down cards. Simple. But cards 6–13 have special abilities when discarded:

·         **6** \- Rearrange two of your own cards (no peeking)

·         **7** \- Peek at one of your own cards

·         **8/9/10** \- Peek at a neighbour's or any player's card

·         **11/12** \- Blind swap cards between players

·         **13** \- Peek at any card, then swap it anywhere

**The Snap Rule (our favourite mechanic):**  
If the top discard matches one of your face-down cards, you can slam it down out of turn and ditch it. But if you know an *opponent* has the matching card, you can take theirs, discard it, and dump one of your cards onto them. Pure chaos.

 

**Ending a round:**  
When you think your face-down total is 5 or less AND lower than everyone else's, you call **MEMO STOP**. Round ends immediately, everyone flips. If you're right, you score 0 and everyone else adds their totals. If you're wrong or someone beats you, you get hit with 20 penalty points instead. High risk, high reward.

 

**Winning:**  
Play until someone hits 100 points. Lowest score wins. There's also a **Perfect Zero Reset**, if you end any round with four 0-value cards, your entire score resets to 0. Game changer.

It plays in 15–60 minutes depending on player count and ruthlessness. Genuinely works from a 2-player duel up to a 10-person party. We've had rounds that were calm and tactical and rounds that descended into absolute mayhem, both equally fun.

This is our first ever Kickstarter launch and we're really excited to finally get it out there. Happy to answer any questions about the rules, design decisions, or anything else!

First launch ever — MEMO5 is on Kickstarter, a memory card game where you win by making everyone else forget