The card game is basically a variant of rummy that incorporates storytelling through the plots represented on the cards. The cards themselves are beautiful, full-color illustrations by Eileen Soper, showing the stories of Five on a Treasure Island, Five Go to Smuggler's Top, Five Go in a Caravan, and Five Get Into Trouble. The objective is to distribute them in order, and the winner will be the one who places the eighth card (the happy ending) in any argument. Obstacles can appear in the form of danger cards, whether they are general danger cards that can be played in any story or one of the four dangers specific to each story.
For Treasure Island, the danger is the men looking for the ingots, in Smuggler's Top he is a vigilant enemy (Block), Caravan has poisoned the meat for Timmy and Trouble causes the doors of Owl's Dene to close on the Five. To continue the story after having played one of these cards, an All Sure card must be added to the sequence. I think mine only cost about 12 pounds, but it's missing the instructions and two of the “All Safe” letters. The objective of the game is to be the first player to complete any adventure card game playing with No.
He was a member of the IPCS committee and was graphic editor of The Playing-Card magazine for many years. Since 1996, Simon's first limited-edition deck of cards was a replica of a traditional 17th century English deck, which he made from woodcuts and templates. The game has 44 cards consisting of four sets of 8 adventure cards, four danger cards, two general danger cards and six safe cards. After Stef's victory, the score is higher: the winner gets 20 points minus the number of cards he has and everyone else gets 10 minus the cards he has.
I think they're pretty obvious assuming you're a fan of The Famous Five enough to have bought or been given the game as a gift. The game is based on four of the books about the adventures of the Five and the images on the cards are all exciting episodes from the books.
