Zora
How Zora is played
The set holds 106 tiles: two copies of 1 to 13 in green, purple, black and grey, plus two jokers. Every tile also carries a small shape, so the colours can be told apart without relying on colour alone.
Setting up
Two to four players. Everyone takes 14 tiles; the rest form a face-down pile. A random player starts and play continues clockwise. Each turn lasts up to two minutes.
Your turn
On your turn you either commit one or more legal combinations, or draw a single tile. Drawing always ends your turn, and a tile drawn now cannot be played until your next turn. There is no discard pile.
Groups
A group is three or four tiles of the same number in different colours. Two tiles of the same colour cannot share a group, even though the set contains two of each.
Runs
A run is three or more tiles of one colour in consecutive ascending order. Runs stop at 1 and 13; they do not wrap around.
Opening with 30
Before you may touch anything already on the table, your first melds must total at least 30 points, built only from your own rack. A joker counts as whatever it represents. If you cannot reach 30, draw a tile and your turn ends.
Rebuilding the table
Once you have opened you may rebuild the table freely: extend melds, split runs, move tiles between combinations, and combine them with tiles from your rack. When you commit, every combination on the table must be legal, every tile that was there must still be there, and anything new must have come from your rack.
Jokers
A joker stands for any tile its combination needs. You may take a joker from the table only on your turn, only after opening, and only by laying the tile it represents. A reclaimed joker must be played again the same turn — it never goes onto your rack.
Ending a round, and scoring it
A round ends the moment somebody commits a turn that empties their rack. Everyone else adds up the tiles they are holding, counting each joker as 25, and records that as negative points. The winner receives the total of everyone else's as positive points. The two columns are kept apart all match, and your score is the positive total minus the negative one.
Hand Rummy
If the host enables Hand Rummy, a player who lays their entire rack in a single turn, having placed nothing earlier that round, skips the 30-point minimum — and every opponent's penalty is doubled.
When nobody can move
The printed instructions do not say what happens if the pile runs out and nobody can play. Zora uses this rule: once the pile is empty, a player who cannot move passes, and if every player passes in a row the round is a stalemate. Nothing is scored and the next round begins.