Foista

Foista is a card game for one player, against opponents the game plays for itself. It's a shedding game in the Crazy Eights family — you may know its cousins as Switch, Mau-Mau or Black Jack — where the aim is to get rid of the cards in your hand. It adds a set of house rules of its own.

Everything happens on your own device. There is no internet game and no other people involved — no account, nothing to sign in to.

One card sits face up in the middle. On your turn you play a card that matches it — the same suit or the same rank. If you hold more than one card of that rank, you can lay them all down together.

If you can't match the card, or would rather not, you take one from the deck — and you're allowed to do that even when you could have played. The first player to get rid of every card in their hand wins the round.

There's a full, illustrated How to play page inside the app. Because it's built from the rules you're actually playing, it always matches your game.

Two things are going on at once:

• The round — empty your hand to win the round.
• The match — when a round ends, everyone still holding cards scores penalty points for them. Those points build up over several rounds, and when a player crosses the knock-out threshold (301 points under the standard rules) they're out. The last player left standing wins the match.

So winning a round isn't really the point — surviving to the end is.

Under the standard rules:

• Two — the next player picks up two. Play a two of your own to pass it on and stack it (four, then six…) until someone takes the pile.
• Eight — the next player misses a turn.
• Black jack (♠ ♣) — the next player picks up five, and it stacks like a two.
• Red jack (♥ ♦) — cancels black jacks, however many are waiting.
• Queen — holds your turn: you follow it with another card. You can't finish on a queen.
• King — reverses the direction of play. (It does nothing in a two-player game.)
• Ace — wild: play it on anything and name the next suit. It can't be used to dodge a pick-up that's waiting to be answered.
• Joker — plays on anything, names the suit, and makes the next player pick up ten. Only another joker answers a joker, and you can't finish on one.

Pick-ups don't mix — a two only answers a two, a black jack only a black jack. If you change the rules (see below), these effects change with them, and the in-app How to play page updates to match.

Under the standard rules you can't go out on a queen or a joker. If the only card you have left is one of those, you take a card from the deck instead and play carries on. (A queen always needs a card after it, so it can never be your last.)

When a round ends, you score penalty points for the cards still in your hand. The round's winner scores nothing. The values are:

• Joker — 50
• Black jack — 30
• Two — 20
• Ace — 14
• King — 13
• Queen — 12
• Red jack — 11
• Every other card — its face value (a seven is 7, and so on).

Those points add up across rounds, and 301 knocks you out of the match under the standard rules.

Opponents that run entirely on your own device — there's no internet match and no other people. There are twelve of them, each with its own style and strength, from the reckless to the ice-cold card-counter, plus a thirteenth you'll only meet if you earn it (see tournaments below).

The gentler opponents aren't playing badly on purpose — they simply remember less of what's already been played. The tougher ones forget nothing.

A tournament is a climb through four tables of increasingly tough opponents. Win a table to move up; lose a match and the run is over — you start again from the first table.

Clear all four and you're champion, which unlocks a final one-on-one with the Governor — an opponent who remembers every hand you've ever played against him.

Yes — the full game lets you build your own games. You can set the number of players (two to four) and the size of a hand, change the knock-out threshold, dial each pick-up up or down, and switch individual rules on or off — the skip, the reverse, the queen-hold, wild aces.

Save a set of rules under its own name and play tournaments with it. The standard game is always there, and can't be changed or removed.

Yes. There's a short welcome, a practice hand you can try, and a teaching mode that explains each special card the first time you meet it and can slow the game down step by step. Once you've found your feet, you can turn that off in Settings.

In Settings you can:

• Set sound to full, reduced, or off. (The small taps you feel — the haptics — are separate.)
• Turn on a four-colour deck (clubs green, diamonds blue), which many people find easier to read.
• Change the back of the cards — pick a built-in design or use a photo of your own — and choose a style for the court cards.

Yes — you can give yourself a name and a photo, used on the scoreboard and at the table. Both are optional, and the game plays perfectly well without either. Your photo is chosen through Apple's own picker, so the app only ever receives the single picture you pick. You can change or remove either at any time in Settings.

How your name and photo are kept private is covered on the privacy page.

Foista is free to download and play. The standard game and the first table of a tournament are yours for nothing, as often as you like.

A single one-time purchase — the full game — unlocks the rest: the later tournament tables, the Governor, and your own custom rules. There's no subscription, and there are no adverts.

It's a one-off purchase you keep, and it's covered by Family Sharing.

Open the full-game screen and tap Restore Purchases. This checks with the App Store and brings your purchase back — you'll need to be signed in with the same Apple Account you bought it on. It's also how you unlock the full game again after reinstalling, or on a new device.

If it says there's nothing to restore, that Apple Account hasn't bought the full game. Purchases are handled entirely by Apple; we can't see or restore them for you.

Yes. Foista can keep your game — the match you're in, your saved rules, your records, and your name and photos — in your own iCloud, so you can pick it up on another device.

It's off until you ask: turn it on in Settings → Backup. You'll need to be signed in to iCloud on each device. If you play on two devices without reopening the app in between, the one that got furthest is the one that carries on. With it off, everything simply stays on the device you're using.

No. The whole game runs on your device, so you can play on a plane or with no signal. The only times Foista talks to Apple are to sync your game to your own iCloud (if you've turned that on) and to handle the in-app purchase. It never connects to us, and there's nothing to sign in to.

An iPhone or iPad running iOS or iPadOS 17 or later.