Object
When playing Penguin Pals' Passing Puzzle, your goal is to be the first to guide your team of penguins to the opposite shore. To do so, you'll have to find a way to take them quickly and safely while blocking the opponents' paths.
Setting up
Before you begin, it's necessary to set the game. Place one ice block on each space of the board. Then each player choses a team of penguins and places them on his shore. Finally, you should shuffle the cards and hand three to each player. Remaining cards should be placed as the Draw Pile, as indicated on the board.
Choose who goes first, and then continue the sequence clockwise.
How to play
In his turn, each player must choose and execute one of the actions described below.
If he still has a penguin on his shore, he may place it on an ice block in the first row (the one closest to his shore).
or
He may move a penguin one space forward, backward or sideways, as long as it lands on an ice block. But penguins are excellent swimmers, and if there is a space with no ice, followed by one with an ice block, the penguin may swim across the first and land on the latter.
or
If he has a penguin on the last row (the one farthest from his initial shore), he may move it to that shore. When a penguin reaches its destination he won't be able to return to the game, but its player can draw an extra card.
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The winner is the first player to get all five penguins to the opposite shore.
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He may take one ice block from the board, as long as there are no penguins on top of it.
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He may move one ice block if there are no penguins on top of it. As with the penguins, ice blocks may move forward, backward or sideways, but they may move as many spaces as the player wishes in one direction.
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He may draw a card. If there are no more cards in the Draw Pile, reshuffle the Discard Pile and place it as the new Draw Pile. If there are no cards there either, then players simply cannot draw.
Expelling
There's no limit to how many penguins can occupy the same ice block. But if one player has more penguins on a space then all other players combined, then his penguins will automatically expel all opponents' penguins.
When this happens, expelled penguins will have to return to their original shores.
Using cards
Players can use cards at any time, even during other players' turns. When a player uses a card, any other player may use one of their own cards in response to it, and so on, which will create a card sequence. Only after able players have used all the cards they wanted that we'll execute the cards' commands, and we do it in the opposite order cards were played.
That means the first card to produce effect is the last one of a sequence, and the last card to produce its effects is the first one used.
It is important to pay attention to the sequence, because cards may annul prior cards or effectively make them useless.
For example, if Joe and John have penguins on the same space, Joe may use 'Fury!' to expel John's penguin. But John may immediately use the card 'Once Again!', having its effects happening before Joe's. That means his penguin could leave the space before Joe's 'Fury!' come into play, saving it.
In another example, Mary uses the card 'Mind Control!' to move one of Rita's penguins. Rita, her opponent, then uses 'Wait a Sec...' to annul Mary's card, but Mary in turn uses another 'Wait a Sec...'. The sequence of cards is 'Mind Control!' > 'Wait a Sec...' > 'Wait a Sec...'. In order to know what actually happened we must read the sequence backwards: the second 'Wait a Sec...' (Mary's) annulled the first 'Wait a Sec...' (Rita's) so that it was not allowed to annul Mary's 'Mind Control!'. Mary could, after all, affect Rita's penguin.
After a card has been used, it is placed facing up on the Discard Pile, as indicated on the board.
Remember that the cards 'Wait a Sec...' and 'You snooze, you lose.' can only be used to annul the previous inside the same sequence, and 'Once Again!' and 'Mind Control!' may move penguins, but not take them from or to the shores.