How to Play UNO: Minions The Rise of Gru (Review, Rules and Instructions)

Minions The Rise of Gru pretty recently made its theatrical debut. Due to the pandemic, this was over two years after its original planned release date. With big children’s movies, a bunch of tie-in merchandise is generally released to cash in on the film. One of these games for the movie was UNO: Minions The Rise of Gru. Due to the delay the card game ended up being released two years before the movie that it was based on. With the movie finally out, this is the best time to finally take a look at it. UNO: Minions The Rise of Gru has the same fun UNO gameplay as every other game in the franchise, even if it does little to stand out in a noticeable way.

Objective of UNO: Minions The Rise of Gru

The objective of UNO: Minions The Rise of Gru is to get rid of all of your cards before the other players in each round.

Setup for UNO: Minions The Rise of Gru

• Each player draws a card. The player that draws the highest number (all action cards count as zero) will be the first dealer.
• Shuffle all of the cards together.
• Deal seven cards to each player.
• You will place the rest of the cards face down on the table to form the Draw Pile.
• Turn the top card from the Draw Pile face up in order to start the Discard Pile. If this card is an action card, see the Action Cards section below to see what happens.
• The player to the left of the dealer starts the game. Each round will start with turn order moving in a clockwise direction.

Playing UNO: Minions The Rise of Gru

On your turn you will try to play one of the cards from your hand onto the Discard Pile. You will look at the top card on the Discard Pile and compare it to the cards in your hand. You may play a card if it matches one of the following:

• Color
• Number
• Symbol

Wild cards can be played on top of any other card.

After playing a card, your turn ends immediately. The next player in turn order will take their turn unless you played an action card that skips their turn.

If you don’t have a card that matches the color, number or symbol of the top card on the Discard Pile, you will have to draw the top card from the Draw Pile. If you can play this card (matches color, number or symbol), you can play it immediately. Otherwise you will add the card to your hand. Play will then pass to the next player in turn order.

You may choose on your turn to not play a card even if you can play it. In this case you will take the top card from the Draw Pile. If this new card can be played, you may immediately play it. You cannot play any cards other than the card you just drew though.

If the Draw Pile ever runs out of cards, you will shuffle the Discard Pile to form a new Draw Pile.

The Cards of UNO: Minions The Rise of Gru

Number Cards

You receive no special action when you play a number card. A number card can only be played if it matches the number or color of the top card on the Discard Pile.

Draw Two

The next player in turn order must take the top two cards from the Draw Pile. They will also miss their next turn.

You can play this card on top of another Draw Two card, or on a card of the same color.

Should you turn over a Draw Two card to start the round, the first player will draw two cards and will lose their turn.

Reverse

A Reverse card changes the current direction of play. If play was moving clockwise (left), it will now move counter-clockwise (right). If it was moving counter-clockwise (right), it will now move clockwise (left).

You may only play a Reverse on top of another Reverse card, or on a card of the same color.

Should you turn over a Reverse card to start the round, the dealer will take the first turn. Play will proceed counter-clockwise.

Skip

When you play a Skip card, the next player in turn order will lose their turn.

You may play a Skip on top of other Skip cards or on cards of the same color.

Should you turn over a Skip card to start the round, the normal first player will skip their turn. The next player in turn order will take the first turn in the round.

Wild

A Wild card allows you to choose the current color of the Discard Pile. You may choose any color, including the color that the Discard Pile was before you played the card.

Since Wild cards can change the current color, Wilds can be played on top of any other card in the game.

Should you turn over a Wild at the start of a round, the first player will get to choose the color and play a card from their hand.

Wild Draw 4

A Wild Draw 4 does a couple different things. First you will treat it like a Wild where the player who plays it gets to choose the color of the Discard Pile. The next player in turn order will also have to take four cards from the Draw pile and will lose their turn.

There is a catch with Wild Draw 4 cards. While they can match any other card in the game, because they are wild, they can only be played in certain situations. You may not play a Wild Draw 4 card if you have another card in your hand that matches the current color of the Discard Pile.

If the player that a Wild Draw 4 is played against thinks it was played incorrectly, they may challenge the player that played it.

The player who played the card shows their hand to the other player. What happens next depends on if the player correctly played the card.

The player played it correctly (they had no cards that matched the current color): The player who challenged the play of the card will now have to draw six cards instead of four.

The player played it incorrectly: The player who incorrectly played the card will have to draw the four cards instead of the player who originally had to draw the cards.

Should you turn over a Wild Draw 4 card to start the round, return it to the bottom of the deck and choose another card.

Wild Dumb Fu

When someone plays this card, the next player in turn order must strike a “Dumb Fu” martial arts pose. They will have to hold this pose until their next turn comes around. If at any time they move, they will have to draw four cards from the Draw Pile.

You will also treat the card like a normal Wild. The player that plays it will get to choose the color of the Discard Pile.

If the Wild Dumb Fu card is turned over to start the game, the first player gets to choose the color that starts the game.

UNO

After you play a card you should always check how many cards you have left in your hand. Should you only have one card, you should immediately yell out “UNO” to let the other players know that you only have one card left.

If another player catches you not saying UNO before the next player takes their turn, you must take the top two cards from the Draw Pile.

End of Round

The round ends when a player plays the last card from their hand. This player has won the round. The winner of the round takes all of the cards left in the other players’ hands. If the winner of the round played a card forcing a player to draw cards, the winner will draw the corresponding number of cards from the Draw Pile. The winner will take these cards to add to their score. The winner will then score points for the cards they received.

• Number Cards: Face Value
• Draw Two, Reverse, Skip: 20 points
• Wild, Wild Draw Four, Wild Dumb Fu: 50 points

If none of the players have scored 500 or more total points, you will play another round. You will play the next round in the same way as the previous round.

Winning UNO: Minions The Rise of Gru

The first player to score 500 or more total points in the game wins.

Alternative Scoring

Instead of using the normal scoring rules, you can choose to use the variant rules.

When a round ends, each player will score points for the cards left in their hand at the end of the round. Cards score the same number of points as the normal game.

The game ends once one of the players have scored 500 or more points. Each player will tally up how many points they scored during the game. The player that scored the least points wins the game.

Review of UNO: Minions The Rise of Gru

UNO: Minions The Rise of Gru is in many ways what you would expect from a typical themed UNO game. The gameplay is basically the same as every other UNO game. There are only a couple minor rule differences. The main difference comes from the theme and one additional card exclusive to this version of the game.

I am not going to go into much detail on the main gameplay as most people have already played at least one version of UNO before. The game is really easy to play where pretty much anyone can play it. Its greatest strength is that it is the type of game that you can enjoy if you don’t want to put too much thought into what you are doing. The game’s simplicity comes at the cost of strategy as there is very little in the game. This means that the game relies pretty heavily on luck.

As for the new Wild Dumb Fu card, there isn’t much to say about it. For the most part it works like any other Wild card. The only difference is that it forces the next player in turn order to strike a silly pose until their next turn. I can see why a mechanic like this was added to a Minions UNO as it fits the theme rather well. It is kind of fun forcing a player to hold a silly pose. I can see younger children really enjoying it.

Other than making the game a little sillier though, it really doesn’t add much to the game. It doesn’t come into play all that often as there are only four of the cards in the deck. In some rounds no one will even play one of them. When they are played, they still don’t have a big impact on the game. It is rather easy to hold a pose until your next turn unless the players purposefully move as slowly as possible. I just don’t see the card making a real difference outside of a few rare occasions.

The only other addition to the game is the Minions theme. I had some mixed feelings about this. The card quality is typical of a UNO game. The only real difference is the artwork. I was actually kind of surprised by the artwork. It has a cartoony/comic book style to it that is quite nice. It can potentially lead to a little confusion though as the cards are a little more cluttered, and the wild cards are white instead of black like most UNO games.