HILO – Keep Your Cards Low 🎨🔁

A card game with highs and lows. HILO by Eilif Svensson and Knut Strømfors, published by Schmidt Spiele, is for 2 to 6 players aged 8 and up – quick to explain and easy to play several times in a row. This multilingual edition comes with rules in English, German, French and Italian.

Each player lays out nine face-down cards in three rows of three, without looking at them, and turns over any two. On your turn you take either the top card of the discard pile or the top card of the draw pile. You can swap it for any card in your layout – face up or face down – or, with a card from the draw pile, discard it and turn over one of your hidden cards instead. The cards range from -1 to 11 in eight colours, and that is where it gets interesting: when you complete a row of three cards in the same colour – horizontally, vertically or diagonally – you have a HILO and may remove the whole row from your layout. Once a player has turned over all their cards, everyone else gets exactly one more turn, and then the cards are counted. But careful: if you end the round and do not have the lowest sum, your points are doubled.

🃏 Nine Cards

Three rows of three.

🔄 Swap and Flip

Replace high with low.

🌈 HILO

Three of a colour in a row.

⚠️ Risky Finish

End the round only if you are lowest.

Why You'll Love It:

• 👥 2 to 6 Players: for families and friends.
• ⚡ Quick Rounds: easy to play again.
• 🧠 Luck and Memory: plus a little tactics. More ideas among our card games.

Quick facts

• Players: 2–6
• Age: 8+
• Designers: Eilif Svensson, Knut Strømfors
• Publisher: Schmidt Spiele
• Contents: 104 playing cards (values -1 to 11 in eight colours), rules
• Rules: English, German, French, Italian
• Edition: multilingual

How do you win? When a player passes 99 points at the end of a round, the player with the fewest total points wins.
What is a HILO? Three cards of the same colour in a row, column or diagonal – you may remove them.

Flip your first two cards and play HILO together. 🔁

⚠️ Warning: Choking hazard – small parts. Not for children under 3 years.