jset

JSet is a Java Card Board Game, playable both locally or on a network, alone or vs some opponents.

I think that the original Set Board game is made and sold by the Set Game company. The following rules are those that I learnt playing with friends, and are pretty close to the original set rules. See also the faq about copyright issues

The Set board game is a card game whose goal is to find matching sets of cards. The game is played using 81 (3^4) unique cards. On each card are drawn a set of identical shapes. These sets of shapes have 4 properties, each shape property taken from a set of 3 possibilities

• color (e.g. red, blue and green)
• type (e.g. rectangle, circle and triangle)
• fill (e.g. empty, full and shaded)
• number (e.g. one, two and three)

The cards are disposed on the table in front of the players. The players must try to identify matching sets of cards. A set of cards is said to be a matching set of cards when given it fulfills the following conditions:

• it is made of 3 cards
• each properties must have either an identical value on all cards, or be completely different. Note: it is of course impossible for all cards to have identical values for all properties as all cards are different.

Matching card set (in jset version 0.20-dev)

This modified screenshot outlines the unique matching set on the board. The set is matching because:

• the set is made of 3 selected cards
• the selected cards have identical shape types
• the selected cards have 3 different colors
• the selected cards have 3 different fill
• the selected cards have 3 different number of shapes