In Singapore the comic character of Mr Kiasu is probably as well known as Rowan Atkinson's Mr Bean here in the UK and in the US. Daryl Chow's Shop Until You Drop card game is based around the character who 'wants to have everything' but you don't need to have seen or even heard of the popular Singaporean TV sitcom to play and enjoy this push-your-luck set collection card game.
In this light, easy-to-play game for 2-5 players, each player takes a character card. On one side these are all the same apart from the artwork but on the reverse each has an asymmetric special ability. These don't hugely complicate the game so unless you're playing this game with young children you can probably jump straight in and play using the special abilities.
The game is played over three rounds. Players will draft cards from a market display and allocate them to one of your character's three shopping bags. The cards all show a % discount and a category/colour. You can have in a bag multiple cards of the same colour provided the total % doesn't exceed 100, or a bag can contain multiple cards showing the same % provided there is no duplication of colour/category. You keep adding cards to your bags until you take a card that you cannot legally allocate to a bag. When that occurs, you Drop one of your bags (ie: lose its contents) and the round ends. The cards you've legally bagged are added to your score pile where they'll score their individual discount % divided by 10 (so a card showing 40% will score 4 points). The various character special abilities let you 'break' a rule: for example, Ah Ma's ability lets her treat 20% cards as any colour. Just expect the occasional moan from players that other characters' special abilities are better than theirs: that's par for the course in most games with asymmetric abilities.
There are cards that require you and/or a neighbouring player to draw another card. This is often a plus early on in a round but more likely to be a liability as players' bags fill... In addition there are Tompang cards that are requests for you to obtain a specific mix of items in the course of the round; for example, having four clothing cards. If you meet the Tompang requirement, you earn a bonus 5 points but there's a 3 point penalty for any Tompang card you take that you fail to satisfy.
Origame's Shop Until You Drop plays quickly: most of our plays ran to around 20 minutes. Gamers will draft their cards with an eye to what they are leaving for other players, and specifically if their choice can force a neighbour to have to Drop a bag. Notwithstanding, Shop Until You Drop is very suitable as a family game, and it's a game that children can play. For younger children there's an educational element too as the game incorporates the need to keep track of the % total in any single colour/category bag: if you already have red (toy) cards in a bag showing 20% and 60% then you'll need to do the math to work out that you cannot add a 30% card to that bag...