Matthew BaileyLet’s kick off by saying 1 A.M. Jailbreak is now going to firmly sit at the top of my list of games that are like Uno, but better.
1 A.M. Jailbreak is a deck-shredding game that sets itself apart by being a little bit different in terms of how you play your cards. You start the game by placing the right amount of each numbered prisoner into each deck, depending on the number of players, then shuffle the deck really well and deal out 12 cards to each player.
With the remaining cards, you create a draw deck and finally lay out a prison cell containing five face-up cards.
On the first turn, the starting player has to lay 1, 2 or 3 of a particular card set. So let’s say, for example, they lay three 5s. The next player then has to lay based on the number of cards played, not the number on the cards. So in that case, they would need to lay either two, three or four cards of a single number.
To be honest, the fact that the cards have numbers actually makes explaining it more confusing. I’m not 100% sure why they bothered with the numbers at all. They should have just stuck with colours, but I guess it helps people who are colour blind. For all intents and purposes, you can ignore the numbers and just focus on the colours.
To explain it more clearly: player one might lay three red cards. Player two can then go up or down by one and lay two, three or four cards of a single colour like blue, yellow, green, brown, etc. If they lay four cards, the next player then has to lay either three, four or five, again going up or down one. There are also X cards that act like a wildcard.
At the end of your turn, assuming you did lay a card, you then have to pick up another card, either blind from the deck or one of the five face-up in the prison, much like how taking trains works in Ticket to Ride, although the prison cards don’t get replenished straight away. You can, if you really want to, take an extra card. It’s rare you’ll do this, but if you’re getting down to your last few cards and don’t have many of each colour, and the stack on the table is high, you might decide it’s better to get more cards back in hand.
If you can’t go, you have to pick up two cards. This means you really need to try and lay at least two cards every round, or you’re not shredding your deck and will end up with the same number of cards at the end of your turn as you started with.
This already works really well and is a genuinely interesting twist on how deck-shredding games play. It needs quite a bit of strategy about what to get rid of from your hand, and in a very different way to something like Uno.
But there’s another mechanic which adds to it even more, and that’s shooting ahead. When it’s your turn, you can lay one card that matches the most recent lay by the previous player before you do your full turn. So let’s say Toby had laid three reds, I could lay another red on top of that pile to make it four reds. The benefit is that I get to lay an extra red, but also I can manipulate the count. If there are now four reds, the next player needs to lay three, four or five of something, which might mean I can then get rid of more cards I wouldn’t otherwise have been able to, or might push the stack within reach of what’s in my hand.
The artwork is simple but effective, and all of the prisoners have a very Where’s Wally vibe to them. It is what it is.
Unfortunately, this is an import, meaning it’s not the easiest thing to get in the UK. But as I always do, I’d 100% recommend travelgames.co.uk as your resource for all things import. They do currently have it in stock.
I absolutely adored 1 A.M. Jailbreak. I really like deck-shredding games, but to be honest, Uno is a little too simplistic. L.A.M.A is really good and we’ve had a lot of fun with Munchkin Monsters, but I think 1 A.M. Jailbreak now sits right at the top of the pile and is definitely one of the best deck-shredding games you can buy. I’d much rather be playing this on holiday with the family this summer than another Uno variant.
