Goal of the Game

In The Overtime, players take on the roles of office workers trying to survive the stress of overtime. The goal is to avoid losing all your life tokens while accumulating as many as possible. The game ends when a player's life reaches 0, and the winner is the one with the most life tokens at the end.

Setup

To set up the game, follow these steps:

1. Distribute 3 life tokens to each player.
2. Determine the starting player. The player who worked the most overtime last week goes first. Other methods of determination are also valid.
3. Shuffle all the deadline cards and deal 5 to each player.

Game Flow

The game follows a sequence of stages that repeat until someone loses all their life tokens:

1. Game Setup: Distribute life tokens and determine the starting player.
2. Card Dealing (Gloomy Monday): Shuffle and deal 5 cards to each player.
3. Card Trading (Morning All-Hands Meeting): Each player chooses two cards to pass to the player on their left and receives two cards from the player on their right.
4. 1st to 4th Rounds (Monday to Thursday): Players play cards in sequence, following specific timing rules and accumulating stress.
5. High Stress Assessment (Stress Check): Players with three or more stress tokens gain a life token.
6. Final Trick (Friday): Players play their last cards, and the loser loses life tokens.
7. Cleanup (Saturday and Sunday): Collect all stress tokens and restart the process.

Actions and How to Play

During the rounds, players follow these rules:

• The starting player plays any card and says: "Excuse me, first!"
• The next players must play a card with a later time than the card in play and say: "Thank you for your hard work!"
• If they cannot play a valid card, they play the card with the earliest time face down, without saying anything.
• The player who plays the card with the latest time receives a stress token and becomes the next starting player.

During the final trick, players with high stress do not participate, and the player who plays the card with the latest time loses life tokens.

End of Game and Scoring

The game ends when a player loses all their life tokens. The winner is the player with the most life tokens at the end. During the final trick, the player who loses loses 2 life tokens if they played the Last Train Owata Card or 1 life token if they played any other card.

Tips for Winning

• Collect cards that allow you to leave late to restore life, but be careful not to run out of options during the final trick.
• Balance your hand between early and late exit cards to avoid losing rounds.
• Defeated players receive a stress token unconditionally, which can help them recover.

Consult the manual for details regarding this section.