Ditcho Cardso with Flixo & Wendo

I've written frequently about golf-style card games — games like Skyjo in which you try to manipulate cards in a personal display to score the fewest points possible — and two new entries in the genre will be sold at SPIEL Essen 26, which opens on 22 October 2026.

Flixo

Flixo is one of three releases from designer Friedemann Friese's 2F-Spiele, with the other two games being Fishing 2 (covered here) and a new edition of Fearsome Floors, which first appeared in 2003. [Disclosure: 2F-Spiele hired me to edit the English-language rules for all three games.]

Flixo has the distinction of being a co-operative golf-style card game, the first such that I've seen. Each of the 2-5 players receives nine cards face down that they place in a 3x3 grid, then they each reveal two cards. Cursed number cards called "Flixos" have been shuffled into the cards initially dealt out, and players collectively try to banish Flixos, while also eliminating cards from their grids.

On a turn, either place the top card of the discard pile face up into your grid while discarding the card that was in that spot, or draw a card from the deck and use it or discard it. If a Flixo is on top of the discard pile, the next player must pick it up and add it to their grid. That might seem bad, but perhaps they can use that cursed number to create a row or column of cards with the same value, thereby removing these cards from the game.

Yes, in most golf games you don't want to give others good cards, but in Flixo the players receive a group score at game's end based on the sum of all cards still in grids — although if a grid still has two rows and two columns along with a Flixo, the team loses the game instead of counting points. Thankfully, when you remove a row with a Flixo, the players collectively choose one face-down card, then look at it, giving extra info to help all of you decide what to discard when.

The game includes rules for upping its difficulty by adding more Flixos (which removes more number cards) and/or not using the -1 and 0 cards, which will probably increase your endgame score.

Wendo

Cards in golf games mostly start face down, but in Jannik Walter's Wendo, a 2-5 player game from KENDi, the back of each card shows two digits, with one of those digits being visible on the card's front side. Each number combination appears twice, with each number visible on one of the cards.

Each player is dealt ten cards, then chooses nine of them — without looking at the fronts! — and arranges them in a 3x3 grid, looking at the tenth card, then placing it on the side as a spare.

On a turn, either you turn one of your grid cards face up to reveal which number is on it or you discard one of your grid cards (turning it face up, if necessary, should folks want to track such things), then draw the top card of one of the two draw piles and place it face up in the empty space, as follows:

Once during the game, when taking the latter action, you can place your spare card instead of drawing from the decks.

As is custom in golf games, when you create a row or column of the same value, those cards vanish, then the grid compacts, possibly creating another line that needs to be removed. When one player has removed all of their cards, the round ends. They score 0 points, while everyone else turns all their cards face up, then scores the sum of these cards. Play multiple rounds until someone has 60+ points, at which time whoever has the fewest points wins.

This is KENDi's second take on a golf game, following staff developer Reinhard Staupe's Blanco in early 2025. (Skyjo has been incredibly successful since its debut in 2015, so I guess the name format of these three games —(word)-O — is meant to signal that this is the same type of design.)