Description

This is a card game based on the stress of living in the Big Apple. There is a deck of 98 cards. Of these, 19 are I Survived New York! cards, which when played in front of a player, open that player to getting stressed out. There are 34 Stress Cards, of five types: Romance, Bucks, Shelter, Nine to Five, and Why Me? There are 38 Relief cards, each of which stops a specific type of stress. There are 5 Quick Fix cards, one for each kind of stress, that both provide relief and prevent that player from receiving any more stress of that kind for the rest of the round. Finally, there are 2 Reversal cards, which of course allow a player to dump his current stress on another player.

Players receive 5 cards each to start, and each turn draw one card and either play or discard one card. They may play their cards on any player including themselves. An I Survived New York card opens a player to receiving stress, one card at a time. A Relief card "closes" a stress pile, at which point that player then adds up his accumulated stress cards and notes the total on a scorepad. All the cards in the closed pile go into the discard pile, and that player is now free of additional stress until someone opens a new stress pile with an ILNY card.

As soon as one player has reached 4,000 stress points and closed his current pile, the round ends, and all cards are returned and reshuffled. When a player accumulates more than 12,000 stress points, he burns out totally and must move to Cleveland. The last survivor wins the game, unless a player accumulates exactly 12,000 points, at which point he wins instantly and becomes Mayor of New York.