Overview
At a glance
Is this game right for my group?
ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.
Easier to teach
High replayability
Highly interactive
Player-count sensitive
Light strategy
More strategic control
How it plays
How does it play?
Bid on your tricks, follow ranks instead of suits, and keep adding digits until every player is wielding an absurdly huge number.
Core mechanisms
Key systems that shape the decisions players make.
Read the full game description
Inflation! is a compact predictive-bidding trick-taking game in which played cards never leave the table. Each new card is placed to the left of a player’s existing row, turning an opening 1 followed by a 5 into 51 and then perhaps 851. Players must follow the led rank when possible, yet the ever-growing full number determines who wins the trick. Before the hand, everyone predicts their tricks: exact bids score double, while the player who takes the most tricks but misses their bid scores nothing. The result is a sharp, funny contest of hand reading and runaway arithmetic.
