Rummy (Remi Etalat)

# Remi Etalat — The FAQ Nobody Asked For (But Everybody Needs)

106 tiles. 2 Jokers. 1 Trump tile that will ruin your week. Welcome to Remi Etalat — a tile-Rummy game where your grandmother's favorite pastime meets a spreadsheet's worth of optional house rules.

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## The Basics

**What even is this game?**

It's Remi (Romanian Rummy) played with tiles instead of cards — think Rummikub's cooler, more dramatic cousin. Lay down groups (same number, different colors) and sequences (same color, running numbers) to empty your hand before your opponents do. Simple to learn, suspiciously hard to stop playing.

**How do I win a round?**

Empty your hand first. That's it. Everything else — Jokers, Trumps, secret hand shapes — is just spicy garnish on that one goal.

**How do I win a *match*?**

Rounds stack up into a match (Best of 1, 2, or 3 — you choose at the Main Menu). Match victory is decided by ROUNDS WON, not total points — you need strictly more round wins than the best opponent seat. Tie on round wins and it's a match Draw, no matter what the scoreboard says.

**Is there an undo button?**

Yes — it's called Cancel, and it fully rewinds your entire turn back to how it looked when you started. Made a formation you instantly regret? Cancel. Accidentally fed the Trump tile to a formation that didn't end the game? Cancel. We don't judge.

**Can I just slam down a huge formation on my very first turn?**

Nope, and this trips people up. Turn one of every round (Loop 1, in the game's own lingo) is deliberately boring: whoever's dealt 15 tiles (the round's "first player") doesn't even pick — they just drop one tile to start the discard pile. Everyone else picks one tile from the deck, then drops one — no formations, no discard, no layoff, no matter how many points you're sitting on. The earliest anyone can attempt a real (scored) first discard is Loop 2, once the table's come all the way back around. Try it early and the game will politely tell you to just drop a tile already.

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## The Weird Stuff (that makes this game *this* game)

**What's the deal with the Trump tile?**

Right after dealing, one tile gets flipped face-up as the Trump. If that number+color was already sitting in your hand at deal time, congratulations — you get a bonus at the end of the round, whether you win or lose. If the Trump is an Ace or a Joker, things can get *doubled*. Possibly twice. The math department sends its regards.

**Can I take the Trump tile for myself?**

You can, but only if grabbing it ends the round on the spot — the take is only legal on a turn where it leaves you exactly one tile, played and dropped for the win. Try to take it "just in case" and the game rejects the whole play at commit time. Press Cancel and it goes right back on its little pedestal.

**Can I steal a Joker from my opponent?**

Yes, and it feels *incredible*. If an opponent's formation has an un-stolen Joker at a spot your hand can fill, you can swap your real tile in and send that Joker packing — then you have to build it a new home with two more tiles from your hand. It's basically a tiny burglary with extra bookkeeping.

**What's "Play-in-Hand" (PIH)?**

Instead of laying tiles down turn by turn like a reasonable person, you can go full secret-agent: keep your whole hand hidden, arrange it into one of several special shapes, and slam it all down at once for a big win. The shapes include:

- **Normal** — a regular full-hand win, just concealed until the big reveal.

- **Mozaic** — all 13 numbers in order, no two neighboring tiles share a color.

- **Bicolor** — same idea, but only two colors allowed, strictly alternating.

- **Monocolor** — same 13-number run, but every tile is the same color. Overachiever energy.

- **Minors / Majors** — your whole hand splits into valid melds using only low numbers (1–9) or only high numbers (1, 10–13).

- **Doubles** — seven matching pairs. Twins, but tiles.

- **Sticks** — four groups shaped like [4, 4, 3, 3]. Exactly as arbitrary as it sounds, exactly as satisfying to pull off.

- **Grand** — every physical copy of one number, all 4 colors, both sets. The tile-hoarder's dream.

Pull one off and you get a chunky bonus on top of the normal scoring — tiered down a little for every Joker you needed to fake your way through it. Miss, and you were just holding 14 tiles very suspiciously for several turns.

**What's "Double Exchange"?**

Before the round even properly starts, if you're holding doubled tiles you don't love, you get first pick of trading one away with an opponent's own doubles — you always go first, no opponent gets to act before you do. Decline as many offers as you like, or work your way through several trades in a row. Whatever's left over afterward, the AI opponents quietly trade among themselves too — works the same whether it's a 2, 3, or 4-player table.

**Why can't I dig endlessly into the discard pile near the end?**

Once your hand drops to 3 tiles or fewer, picking from the discard pile (or taking the Trump) is only allowed if that exact pick ends the game for you right then and there. No more "just grabbing a spare tile to be safe" — the endgame gets stricter on purpose.

**What happens if the tile bag runs dry?**

The discard pile gets reshuffled back into a fresh deck (up to 3 times a round) — except the very first tile ever discarded, which stays locked in the pile forever and can never be picked. Run the deck dry a 4th time and the round ends in a Draw, scored as if nobody had gone out. Nobody wins, nobody loses, everybody mildly disappointed together.

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## "Do You Have Other Rules?"

No problem — here's what you can set this game to play like:

Crack open Settings and you'll find everything sorted into collapsible categories, because nobody wants to scroll through 100 fields to change one number:

- **Scoring** — how many points tiles are worth in play, in hand, and the minimum you need for your first discard (independently tunable per difficulty).

- **Bonuses & Penalties** — going-out bonus, never-discarded penalty, Trump bonus. Carrots and sticks.

- **Game Rules** — toggle whether Aces/Jokers double the game, whether 3-tiles-left players get extra pickup rights, whether Jokers are allowed in a first discard, and how strict Double Exchange is.

- **Play-in-Hand (PIH)** — turn any of the 8 special hand shapes (plus the plain concealed Normal win) on or off, tune their bonuses, and set how many Jokers each one tolerates. Want Doubles to allow Jokers? Now it can. Want Grand disabled entirely? Set its bonus to 0 and it's banned outright.

- **Display & Layout** — tile scales, board grid position, plaque position/size, seat colors, and a whole shelf of animation-timing dials: how fast tiles fly onto the board, how long a pick/discard glides, even how the initial deal reveals itself (see below).

- **Debug / Testing** — peek at AI hands. Mostly for us, but hey, it's your game now.

Change your mind? Hit **Restore Defaults** and pretend none of it happened.

Feeling like a mad scientist? There's also a separate **Strategy** screen, unlocked per difficulty (Easy/Basic/Hard each own their own slice), where you can flip individual AI behaviors on or off — extending formations, splitting sequences, Joker swaps, drop-pile digging, defensive discards, and a dozen more — plus fine-tune exactly how eager the AI is to chase a Play-in-Hand win instead of playing it safe. It's overkill in the best way.

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## Playing With/Against Others

**How many players?**

2, 3, or 4. You (the human, presumably) plus up to 3 AI opponents, each with their own seat, hand, and plaque.

**Can I play online with friends?**

Not currently — this build is you versus the AI, locally, on your own machine. The AI doesn't take breaks, doesn't get salty when you steal its Joker, and never "accidentally" knocks the table.

**How hard is the AI?**

Easy, Basic, or Hard, picked from the Main Menu. Each difficulty owns its own set of AI strategies and Play-in-Hand thresholds (see the Strategy screen above) — Easy plays it straightforward, Hard digs deep into the discard pile, plays defensively, and chases big shapes when the odds favor it.

**Do I get to watch the deal happen?**

Yes — tiles fly in one by one at the start of every round instead of just appearing. Whoever's first that round gets dealt first, tile by tile, then everyone else follows in turn order. If you'd rather skip the theatrics, the fly-in speed and pacing between tiles are both configurable in Settings (and setting the fly-in duration to 0 skips the animation entirely, hands just appear like before).

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## Practical Nonsense

**What platform is this on?**

Windows desktop, built in Godot. It runs, it's tested, it's tile-shaped.

**Is my progress saved?**

Yes — close mid-round and you can resume right where you left off, hands, board, deck and all. The game remembers your win/loss record and your last 3 rounds too, in case you need receipts.

**Why is there a Joker with a permanent grudge?**

Once a Joker gets stolen out of a formation, it's locked forever into acting as whatever number it was replacing — no take-backs, no re-stealing, and its point value gets frozen at the moment of the theft too, even if it later ends up in a completely different formation. It has served its purpose and now lives a quiet, numbered life.

**I found a bug. Now what?**

Every good tile game has a few. Report it, we'll take a look, and in the meantime just blame the Trump tile — everyone else does.

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*Remi Etalat — because "just one more round" was never actually just one more round.*