Nine Knives Card Game 2025

Nine Knives Card Game is an elimination-style party game, that plunges players into the role of peculiar suspects who are all competing against one another to be the last person standing. Through strategic card play, players navigate a minefield of deduction and risk by using special action cards and drafting play now cards that can either boost or diminish your chances for survival to win. It's a battle of wits and luck, where only the most cunning (and perhaps the luckiest) will survive.

The story of Knives is intentionally vague, creating a sense of playful paranoia in a room full of suspects. The objective isn't to solve a specific crime per se, but rather to be the last one holding onto any evidentiary weapons cards to strengthen your chances for survival. Players are thrown into a situation where they must deduce who is holding the most deadly cards, and avoid being the one who is eliminated. The 'story' unfolds through the players' actions and deductions, creating emergent narratives each round.

Players start the game with 2 cards, and choose whether to play a card from their hand OR draw a card from the deck each turn. The objective of the game is to be the only remaining player in the game. Players remain in the game by having cards in their hand. Players are eliminated from the game once they have 0 cards in their hand. To win the game you must be the only person with cards in your hand at the end of the game.

—description from the designer