User:KarosXI/sandbox

"Happy Salmon"

Designers	Ken Gruhl and Quentin
Publishers	North Star Games
Publication	2016
Genres	Card game
Languages	English
Players	3-6
Setup time	<1 minute
Playing time	15 minutes
Chance	Medium
Ages	6

Happy Salmon  was first released in 2016. Happy Salmon is a card game published by North Star games and designed by Ken Gruhl and Quentin. The game is packed in a fish-shaped fabric bag. There are 72 cards in the box. A rule book and Happy Salmon Pouch are also included in the box. The original Happy Salmon pack comes with a green bag while the expansion pack comes with a gorgeous blue bag. Happy Salmon pack is designed to be played by 3-6 players. The recommended age for players to be allowed to participate in the Happy Salmon game is more than 6 years old. The setup time before playing Happy Salmon typically takes around 1 minutes and the gameplay can last up to 15 minutes.

Game play

Choose a color then, take 12 cards that are the same color that you chose. High 5, Pound It, Switcheroo, and titular Happy Salmon, these are the name of card that the player should hold at least one. Everyone revealed their cards then, shout out the action that is written on the card. If any player shouts the same action that you have, do that action together. Then, place that card on the table. The first player to have an empty hand and say “finished” wins the game.

Action card

• High 5: players high five each other.
• Pound It: players fist bump each other.
• Switcheroo: players switch places.
• Happy Salmon: players flip their hands against each other very fast, like two fish splashing.

Development

Developer

North Star Game, Dominic Crapuchettes established North Star Games company in 2003. For the purpose to innovate the drowsy party game market. Dominic designed his game when he was a middle schooler. The first game that he designed was Kabloogi. Then in high school, he designed a Conceptual pursuit game. Later this game turned into Wits & Wagers and has sold more than 2millions copies. In 2001 he decided to go to business school and upon graduating in 2003 from the MBA program at the University of Maryland, he established North Star Games. The name of the company comes from the founder’s experience about north star. He stated about when he used to be the captain of a commercial fishing vessel in Alaska. One stormy night, his boat became submerged. All of the electronics died, and he was forced to guide his boat home by the North Star.

Happy Salmon

The original Happy Salmon was first released in 2016. The original pack comes with a green bag. Happy Salmon will be reconstructed by using Exploding-kittens as a base and will be released in November 2021. The studio behind Exploding Kittens took over the Happy Salmon game and at the end of 2021 a new version of the game will be released and will come with a gorgeous blue bag.

Benefits of card game

Mental Health

Playing card games can improve mental health because it requires the player to have good strategic thinking and problem-solving skills. From the research conducted by Keith A. Josephs,  he stated that playing card games can only delay Alzheimer's diseases but it can not prevent it from happening, Dr.Csikszentmihalyi stated that playing a lot of card games will make mind become focused and will achieve the "flow state" where there will have a lot of concentration in the mind. It also makes people mind relax and recover.

The study conducted by CCSU business & Development has found that the more skills people learn in the game, the more they will improve their performance on multitasking.

Most card games require the memorisation of the card. By playing it regularly, it will affect the short-term memory and will result in the improvement of the capacity of the memory which might be useful in real-life situations.

Teamwork and conversation can be improved by playing card games or board games. Card games are one of the best hobbies to do in leisure time to improve the brain and build a better relationship with others and prevent mind from being distracted.

Physical Health

Playing cards game can improve hand-eye coordination. By examining the cards, holding the cards in one hand and using the other hand to lay down the card on the table helps to improve hand-eye coordination skill. Playing cards also improves other skills such as having a quicker reaction time from having a lot of experience in shuffling and dealing the cards thousands of times. It not only improves gross motor skill but it also improves fine motor skill as well. There will be major improvements in physical and mental health if they start playing card games with their friends.

Related game

Funky Chicken

Funky Chicken is a card game published by North Star games. Funky Chicken is more of like an expansion pack of Happy Salmon because Funky Chicken and Happy Salmon can be played together in a mixed deck. In Funky Chicken, It replaces the Happy Salmon high-five, position-switch, fist-bump and Happy Salmon card with dance moves. So, it requires more space to play this game and some people find the dance moves more enjoyable.

Exploding Kittens

Exploding-Kittens is a card game published by The Oatmeal. It was first released in July,2015. This card game  is very similar to Happy Salmon. Exploding-Kittens requires the player to draw 7 cards while Happy Salmon requires the player to draw 12 cards.

External links

Official website

https://www.explodingkittens.com/