Tongo | DJcube

Original Release: Seen on-screen in 1993
Developer: luminous1, Dean Jones
Publisher: Self-Published
Original Platform: Board Game

I manged to find some rules form Tongo that someone made based on all mentions of the game in the script of Deep Space Nine. It’s a Poker-like game with lots of random stuff happening with round cards, square cards, dice and betting. The rules I found used standard cards, while I found some imagery of Tongo cards and edited them to create numbered cards in four ranks.

The round cards are your personal hand, these are visible to only you. The square cards are placed on the floor (the spinner), mostly face down. Every single card is part of the game, and have have to move and manipulate them. However, they can only be moved when face down so you have to try and memorise where they are. On top of that, the board is then spun so people have to keep focused so they don’t lose track of which section the cards they need are on. The vertical cards are called the “floor” and are used in determining hand ranking while the horizontal ones are used for exchanging. Finally, the dice can be rolled if they are on the segment facing you. Everyone can use the dice, which count as any rank, but they can only be used to increase a hand and nor form one (for example, a dice can’t be used for a pair, but it can turn a pair into a three-of-a-kind).

Instead of betting, you pay for actions into the pot. Frist you can alter the buy/sell/exchange values, then pay to buy (flip face up), sell (flip face down) or exchange (swap with a card in the vertical row on the same or other section of the board). There are two ways of challenging other players: confront or acquire.

Confront means all players can use the cards in any of the floors, it doesn’t matter who they are facing. Acquire means everyone is forced to use the cards in the section in front of them. You score your hand based on the round cards you have, the card in the flop and the three dice.

Tongo is a very complicated poker, with individual rounds taking a long time – with potentially only a single round in the game. There’s a lot of card manipulation and trying to keep track of what is going on. Unfortunately, the version I’ve made in Tabletop Simulator isn’t fully functional, but I’m trying to figure out the scripting to make it work.