Eternal Sevens Review – Seventh Heaven

A prototype copy of Eternal Sevens was kindly provided by Tricktakers Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

How to buy: If you’re trying to buy a copy of Eternal Sevens, click here for information about ordering a copy.

Review

When your breakthrough hit is something like Eternal Decks, you have to do something special to follow it. In Eternal Sevens, Hiroken has managed to do just that. Sevens not only matches Decks, for me, but it also betters it. It’s a different game, for sure, but with the rough edges smoothed off, Eternal Sevens might just be my favourite shedding game.

Eternal Decks, if it somehow passed you by, started as an underground hit for designer Hiroken. With its design language of black and vibrant, over-saturated colours, and a co-operative, limited communication design which feels like The Crew cranked all the way up to 11, it’s something special. If you’d like to know more about it, I suggest you head over to my Eternal Decks review first, but then hurry back.

When I first heard that Eternal Sevens was on the way, I was apprehensive. It looked just like Decks on the surface, but instead of something new, it’s based on a traditional game called Sevens. I was worried that Hiroken saw the international success that Decks had garnered, and deservedly so, and found a way to ride on its coat tails.

Hiroken, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have doubted you. Eternal Sevens does for Sevens what Eternal Decks did for games like The Crew or Hanabi. The biggest difference between the games that you need to know before we go any further is that Eternal Sevens is a competitive game, in stark contrast to Eternal Decks’ cooperative underpinnings. No communal winning here. One will rise, the others will fall.

Walking a tightrope

Eternal Sevens is easier to learn than Eternal Decks. The concept is easy.

There are four suits of cards with values from 1 to 9. You can start a row with a 4, 5, 6, or 7. From then on you try to add the next card to either end of the row. The aim of the game is to get rid of (shed) all of the cards in your hand, which makes it sound easy and a little dull. However, there are a few things you need to know which prevent the game from being anything like dull.

If you play the 2 or 9 of a suit, you activate an Eternal’s power from the board. If you’ve played Eternal Decks, you’ll remember the Eternals. The colourful creatures whose antics change the rules in ways seemingly designed to make your life more difficult. There’s a bunch of them in the box to mess around with your plans. For instance, you might have all kinds of devious plans in mind, then someone triggers the Skeleton, forcing everyone to pass a card clockwise.

Then you need to know what happens if you play the 1 or 9 of a suit. Doing this lets any player then play a purple card to the end of the row, which acts as a kind of wormhole to the opposite end of the row. It also unlocks a precious star block, which jumps into the space still left in the row. Whichever space the star block sits on will be the last card played in that row, and star blocks are the key to winning.

What does this all mean to you? Let’s add some context.

Let’s say someone plays a purple card to the end of the red row. The star block zooms all of the way down to the red 8 space, and you have the red 8 in your hand. Result! All you need now is for someone to play the 9 or the 7, and you can play your card there and claim the block. Here’s the catch. Because the other players don’t have the red 8, they’re going to do their damnedest to make sure they never make it possible for you to play it.

It’s in this space, the tiny gap where you’re waiting to play that winning card, that Hiroken has worked his magic.

Shenanigans

You’ve got two choices on your turn. Play a card, which seems like a good thing in a game where you’re trying to get rid of your cards, right? Or, pass. Passing sounds like a bad idea, because it means you’re a card behind the other players now, but passing can be super powerful. Passing means playing one of your passing tokens onto your character’s space and claiming one of the bonuses.

Bonuses include things like Play Again tokens and Rare cards. If you played Eternal Decks, you might remember the lavender Rare cards. Wild cards that you can play in any other card’s stead. You get a Rare card, and all of a sudden you’ve got a card that can finish any row and claim the star. Maybe you know that another player already has a Rare card and is just waiting for someone to play the penultimate card in a row so that they can pounce. You’ve got a play again token, though, and both cards needed to finish the row. Bang! Bang! Both cards played, and I’ll be taking that star block thankyouverymuch.

Lurking under all of this though, beneath all of the serpentine cunning and misdirection, is a shedding game. It’s easy to get so distracted by the stars that you forget you can win just by getting rid of all of your cards.

These examples only scratch the surface of what’s possible in Eternal Sevens, and what I really appreciate is that you’re never just thrown in the deep end, nor forced to play a game that’s too easy. Hiroken has added Casual and Gamer modes to the game, with Gamer having more going on. Within each mode, there’s a kind of introduction mode followed by a more advanced mode too, so no matter what the level of gaming experience you have around the table, there are two important things happening.

Firstly, you can play at a level that everybody can understand. Secondly, you have a natural progression path for the folk who come in at the easiest level and want to experience more of what’s on offer in the black & purple box of delights that is Eternal Sevens.

Final thoughts

If it isn’t obvious already, let me just say for the record that Eternal Sevens is brilliant. The basic modes are fun enough, but playing the Gamer mode is where it’s at for me. Eternals’ actions trigger all kinds of nonsense in Gamer mode, which are still present in the Casual game’s Eternals, but it’s more like having something from all of the Eternals in one game. On top of that, the Gamer mode adds a VP track into the mix. Glorious stuff.

I don’t think it’s either possible or fair to say whether Eternal Sevens is better than Eternal Decks. It’d be like trying to choose between your favourite drink and your favourite food. They’re entirely different games which just happen to look very similar. Decks is a co-operative game which tends to be very quiet, whereas Sevens is a highly competitive game accompanied by oohs, ahhs, and colourful language from the person you’ve just royally dicked over.

The presentation, courtesy of Mujunsha, is unmistakeable. The lavender and black box. The silky sheet that acts as a playmat. The gorgeous illustrations and kaleidoscopic colours used throughout. Eternal Sevens will be another game that not only turns heads at conventions, but deserves to. Yes, the rulebook takes a little getting used to. Not because it’s bad; it’s just different. But that’s my only real complaint. Eternal Sevens is just great.

Pros & Cons

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How to get Eternal Sevens

If you tried to get hold of Eternal Decks, then you know how tricky it can be. For the time being, getting your hands on Eternal Sevens is also tricky, but should get significantly easier by the end of the year.

In the UK, distribution will be handled exclusively by Travel Games. Click here for the pre-order page.

In the USA, distribution will likely be handled by Portland Game Collective. I will add a link as soon as I have confirmation.

In Canada, orders will be handled by Red Goose Games.

In Australia, distribution is expected through Let’s Play Games.

For other countries, Hiroken has put together an ordering thread over on the Sevens BGG page, where you can find out more about getting it wherever you live.

Eternal Sevens (2026)

Design: Hiroken
Publisher: Tricktakers Games
Art: Mujunsha
Players: 2-4
Playing time: 15-45 mins

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