Parasit 2025

Parasit is a bluffing and deception card game for 3–6 players. The game revolves around who can lie convincingly and who can read through others' lies — whoever gets caught is literally left holding the cards, like a parasite.

The goal is to be the first player to get rid of all your cards. On their turn, a player places one or more cards face down and announces a value for them — whether that value is true or a lie is left open. The next player can either add their own face-down cards under the same announced value, or flip over one of the cards just played to challenge the claim. If the challenger is right, the player who lied must pick up the entire discard pile; if the challenger is wrong, they must pick it up instead. Whoever ends up taking the pile starts the next phase. A special card lets a player intervene once per round even when it isn't their turn, flipping a card to challenge a claim out of turn — again, being right or wrong determines who takes the pile.

A round ends as soon as one player has no cards left, or a player ends up holding all four Parasite cards. Afterward, each remaining card is worth one point and each Parasite card is worth two; if a player holds all four Parasite cards, only that player scores points for the round, and everyone else scores zero. Over the course of several rounds, whoever accumulates the fewest points wins the game.

—description from the designer