Just a question, so if the deck is held with one hand when playing a card game or something won't the top card hide the bottom cards artwork and you will need to separate each card in order to figure out what they are?
Its good for a two card game but what if a game that consists of multiple cards?!
When playing a card game, you may have to fan out our cards bit wider than you're used to, in order to see the art. We found in tests that our cards worked well with games that have 5- or 7-card hands, like poker or gin. We didn't test on bridge players, but one person we spoke to said that she thinks it could be cumbersome to play bridge with the cards.
And then there are the games that are very much enhanced with these cards -- speed games like spit, and party games like crazy eights are a real trip. One guy even told us that he thought his kids would like using our cards for drinking games. What a dad!
Bridge is difficult even with a standard poker deck - the cards in a bridge deck are more narrow by a quarter-inch on purpose, to allow people to easily hold 13 cards in their hand.
This isn't a deck for everyone, every game, every application. Having said that, it's an attractive work of art that also makes you think a little harder. I could easily see where certain types of games would be enhanced by this design.
The target audience for something like this would be people who enjoy art decks, people who are fond of high design, people who like to play non-traditional games or are open-minded enough to play traditional games in a non-traditional way, etc. I could see this as being a great deck for pre-teen kids, and I suspect girls might find it at least as interesting as boys would, perhaps even more so. It forces you to exercise mental plasticity - an ability to look at things different, with a new perspective, particularly as it relates to problem solving and puzzles. Anyone with intelligence and a creative streak will find this an enjoyable alternative. They'll never replace a pack of playing cards, but then again, neither will a pack of Uno cards, or Skip-bo, Rook, etc.
BTW: bit of trivia - Rook was actually INTENDED to be a replacement for playing cards. The game's inventors, George Parker (one of the Parker Brothers) and his wife, Grace, wanted to create a card game for the several religious groups that were morally opposed to or religiously banned from using traditional playing cards because of their associations with gambling. It's a modified version of the French
tarot game decks - the trump cards 1-21 are removed (0 becomes the game's one joker), the suits become colors and the four court cards in each of the suits were remade into the number cards 11 through 14. It's somewhat ironic, since with the subtraction of just four cards, the Rook deck can be used to play almost any standard card game.
