Swooop!

Every card played must be equal or lower than the last. Go too high and the whole pile is yours. Four tiers of opponent, and the top one plays like it can see your hand.

Swoop is a real card game — the one played in kitchens and pubs under a dozen different names — and the rule everybody gets wrong is the first one.

You play EQUAL OR LOWER. Not higher.

That single inversion turns a familiar shedding game inside out. An ace is nearly worthless. A two is gold. Playing a king feels safe and hands you the entire pile.

HOW IT GOES

Nineteen cards each: eleven in hand, four face up on the table, and four face down beneath them that nobody has seen — not you, not your opponents, not the game. Shed everything and you are out with nothing against your name. Get it wrong and you are picking the pile back up.

Tens and jokers sweep the pile off the table on sight. Four of a kind does the same. And a face-down mystery card is turned over blind, played the instant you touch it, with no way back.

FOUR OPPONENTS, AND THEY ARE NOT THE SAME

Rookie spends its aces early and wastes its swoops. Casual plays a tidy game and dodges most piles it can see coming. Sharp counts what has left the table and thinks a move ahead. Ace guesses at the hand it cannot see, ten different ways, and searches every guess.

The difference between them is measured, not asserted. Each tier plays a seeded tournament against the others before it ships, and the ladder has to hold or the build does not go out.

They take their time, too. A forced move snaps out; a close call gets a beat of hesitation; a blind flip into a fat pile takes the longest. Nobody at this table answers instantly, because nobody real does.

PLAY WITH PEOPLE

Host a table and read out a six-character code. Anywhere in the world, no accounts, no friend requests, no waiting in a lobby for strangers who are not there. Bots fill whatever seats nobody takes, so a table never sits waiting. Same room instead? It finds tables on your Wi-Fi by itself.

THE GAUNTLET

Five tables, one life, rising difficulty. Lose once and it is over.

MADE WITH SOME CARE

The table is 3D and lit, and you can turn it — sit at it, or look down on the whole thing from above with everybody's cards on the felt. Turn the phone sideways and the room widens out.

Every sound is a real deck recorded on felt: a card landing on bare table and a card landing on a pile twenty deep are different recordings, not the same one slowed down, and the game never plays the same take twice in a row.

No adverts. No timers. No energy. No pop-ups asking you to rate it. You paid nothing and the game wants nothing from you.

RULES

The full rules are in the app, and they are the real ones — cross-checked against the published description of the game rather than invented. One deliberate change: a match is a fixed number of deals rather than a race to 500 points. When low wins, "first to 500" means the match ends when somebody plays badly enough, and a table of good players goes on forever.