Uno was one of the major success stories of the early days of the Xbox Live Arcade service on the Xbox 360. With a combination of good release timing, the right price and a game that people either already knew how to play or could pick up quickly, it wasn’t surprising that Uno was the first Xbox Live Arcade game to top a million units. With continued support through card content packs and additional Avatar and Xbox Vision Camera support, Uno continues to be the #1 best-selling game on the service.

Someone out there wanted something a little different from their game of Uno. Perhaps it is too slow paced, or maybe they’ve just become tired of the basic game. Regardless of the reason, someone at Carbonated Games has come up with the concept of Uno Rush. Uno Rush retains the appearance and rules of a standard game of Uno; players are still aiming to free themselves of their hand, cards are placed down based on matching numbers or colours, and wild cards still throw a spanner in the works. The key differences are that Uno Rush lets players see everyone else’s cards, and gives you about five seconds to play your hand.


Rather than simply deciding which card to play when it is your turn, most of your time in Uno Rush is spent shuffling your deck. When it is your turn to play a card, you’ve got five seconds to get a playable card to the front of your deck. The fun doesn’t stop there, though – if the card behind your first played card is playable, then it is played too. The idea then becomes to attempt to shuffle your hand so that you can get rid of as many cards as possible in a single hand by using this kind of chain reaction. If your next card isn’t playable, or it’s a wild card, your turn ends and it moves onto the next player, and continues until the game is over. Quick thinking and even quicker hands are the keys to victory.

Uno Rush is hectic – you are constantly shuffling your cards around while other players take their turn, panicking about having them in the right order and cursing when the player before you destroys your plan, causing more urgent reshuffling. The leisurely pace of the original Uno is out the window, so you can’t really use the game to catch up with friends over Xbox Live, and the Vision Camera feature tends to be useless, with most people focusing on the game. That’s not to suggest that it’s any less fun, though.


Scoring is handled much in the same way as the original Uno game, with points award based on the speed and method of victory. Matches can be customised using the house rules option, allowing for faster matches and different ways to win a match. You can also play team matches and elimination games for a bit of extra variety. Since you can see all of your opponents cards at any time, Uno Rush also includes an offline method of play, which some felt was a key omission from the original game, and the speedy pace of the game actually seems to lend itself better to playing with folks in the same room.

Uno Rush is ruthless, chaotic and ever so fun. It’s an interesting and enjoyable variation on a classic game. Some might prefer the more relaxed pace of the original game, while others might feel Uno Rush is a tad too expensive for what it is, but we feel that Uno Rush is really the best it can be.