Lost Cities: Rivals invites more people to one of the best two-player games ever

Lost Cities is one of the best games ever made for just two people. You know it’s official because we put it on a list that proves as much. In fact, the only thing that’s disappointing about the simply brilliant couples’ favourite is that you can’t play it with more people.

Well, you couldn’t, anyway. But that’s changing with the announcement of Lost Cities: Rivals, a new version of the card-laying hit that will let you bring it out on double dates and paly with up to a whopping FOUR people. That’s, like, twice as many!

For better or worse, depending on how the gameplay ends up scaling, the core mechanics are largely unchanged: players still lay down gradually increasing numbered cards to go on ‘expeditions’, multiplying their score with wager cards and hoping to avoid accidentally doubling, tripling or quadrupling down on a negative point value when all’s added up.

What is new is the ability to bid for cards, in an introduction of one of designer Reiner Knizia’s favourite gameplay elements: auctions. Players can chose to uncover cards from the deck and add them to a display, or begin an auction to claim all of the revealed cards, with the winner able to add the cards they get to their display or return a card to the game box.

Lost Cities: Rivals is due out this August, and will cost a reasonable $15 (£11). Despite the added player count, the play time is still estimated to be around 40 minutes – just 10 minutes longer than the original.