UNO The Office Card Game Rules Explained With Pictures

Objective of UNO The Office

The objective of UNO The Office is to be the first player to play all of the cards from your hand.

Setup for UNO The Office

Choose a player to be the dealer.
The dealer shuffles all of the cards. They will deal seven cards to each player.
The remaining cards are placed face down on the table to form the Draw Pile.
Turn over the top card from the Draw Pile in order to form the Discard Pile. If the card you turn over is an Action Card, ignore its effect. Flip over another card.
The player to the left of the dealer starts the game. Play moves clockwise/left to start the game.

Playing UNO The Office

On your turn you will try to play one of the cards from your hand to the Discard Pile. In order to play a card it has to match at least one attribute of the top card on the Discard Pile. The card can match one of the following:

Color
Number
Symbol

If you have a card that matches one of the attributes, you can play the card to the Discard Pile. If you play an Action Card, you will take a special action. See the corresponding section below for more details.

Playing a card in UNO The Office — The top card on the Discard Pile is a green one. The first card on the bottom could be played because it matches the color. You could play the second card because it matches the number. The final three cards can be played because they are wild.

Playing a matching symbol card — The top card on the Discard Pile is a Reverse card. You could play your own Reverse card because it matches the symbol.

After you play a card, your turn ends. Play passes to the next player in turn order.

You may have a card in your hand that you can play, but you don’t want to play it. In this situation you are not forced to play the card. If you choose not to play a card though, you cannot play that card for the rest of your current turn. You will treat the rest of your turn as if you had no cards that you could play from your hand.

Drawing a Card

If you do not have a card in your hand that you can play or you choose not to play one, you will take the top card from the Draw Pile. If there are no cards left in the Draw Pile, you will shuffle the Discard Pile in order to form a new Draw Pile.

Look at the card that you just drew. If you can play this new card, you can play it immediately if you want to.

Otherwise you will add the card to your hand.

In either case your turn ends. Play passes to the next player in turn order.

UNO The Office Card Meanings

Numbers

Number cards do not have a special action. You can only play a number card when it matches the number or color of the top card on the Discard Pile.

Draw Two

The Draw Two card forces the next player in turn order to draw two cards. They also lose their turn.

You can play a Draw Two on top of another Draw Two card, or on a card that matches its color. If a Draw Two card is played against you, you cannot play your own Draw Two card in order to avoid the punishment.

Reverse

When you play a Reverse card, the direction of play reverses. If play was moving clockwise/left, it will now move counterclockwise/right. If it was moving counterclockwise/right, it will now move clockwise/left.

You can play a Reverse card on top of another Reverse card, or on a card that matches its color.

Skip

Should you play a Skip card, the next player in turn order loses their turn.

You can play a Skip card on top of another Skip card, or on a card that matches its color. If a Skip card is played against you, you cannot play your own Skip card in order to avoid the punishment.

Wild

Wild cards match any other card in the game. Therefore you can play them at any time even if you have another card in your hand that you can play.

When you play a Wild card you get to choose the color for the Discard Pile. You can choose any of the four colors, including the color it was when you played the card.

Wild Draw Four

The Wild Draw Four card is wild so it matches every other card in the game. Therefore you can play it on top of any other card.

When you play the card you also get to choose the color for the Discard Pile. The color you change the Discard Pile to has no impact on a potential challenge of the card.

The catch with a Wild Draw Four card is that you can only play it if you have no cards in your hand that match the color of the Discard Pile from before you played the Wild Draw Four card. Wilds match the color in this situation. You can still play the card if you have a card that matches the number or symbol of the top card on the Discard Pile.

Playing a Wild Draw Four card — The last player played a Wild Draw Four card on top of a purple four.

The next player in turn order has two options on how to handle the card.

First they can accept the play of the card. In this case they will draw four cards and will lose their turn.

Challenging the Wild Draw Four

Otherwise the next player can challenge the player that played the Wild Draw Four. In this case the player that played the card has to show the challenger all of the cards from their hand. This is done so the challenger can see if the card was played correctly. They are looking to see if the player had a card in their hand that matches the color of the Discard Pile before the Wild Draw Four was played.

If the player did not have any matching colored cards in their hand, they played the card correctly. The challenging player now has to draw six cards and they lose their turn.

Playing a Wild Draw Four card correctly — The player who played the Wild Draw Four card did not have any purple cards in their hand. Therefore they played the card correctly. The challenger now has to draw six cards.

If there was a matching color card in their hand though, the player played the card incorrectly. The player who played the Wild Draw Four card now has to draw the four cards. The challenging player does not have to draw any cards, and they don’t lose their turn.

Playing a Wild Draw Four card incorrectly — The player who played the Wild Draw Four card had a purple card in their hand. Therefore they played the card incorrectly. They will have to draw the four cards instead of the challenger.

Wild Kevin’s Famous Chili

Whenever a player plays the Wild Kevin’s Famous Chili card, all of the players must immediately drop all of the cards from their hand. The last player to drop all of their cards, has to draw two cards from the Draw Pile. All of the players then pick up their cards.

The card is wild so you can play it at any time. When you play the card you also get to choose the color for the Discard Pile.

I believe there is an error in the UNO The Office rules regarding this card. It says that if a Wild Kevin’s Famous Chili card is turned up to start the game, the player to the left of the dealer gets to choose the color for the Discard Pile. The rules also say if any Action Card is revealed to start the game, you ignore its action and flip over another card. This contradicts the rule for this card. This is the only Action Card that says what you do with it if it is turned over to start the game. This was probably not meant to be in the rules. Therefore I would say that you just ignore the effect of the card if it is turned over to start the game.

Calling UNO

When you only have one card left in your hand, you need to say “UNO”. This is to tell the other players that you are close to winning the game.

Should a player catch you not saying UNO, you must draw two cards. They must challenge you before the next player begins their turn.

Winning UNO The Office

The first player to play all of the cards from their hand, wins UNO The Office.

Alternative Scoring

If you would like to play multiple hands, you can choose to keep score.

The winner of each hand collects all of the cards left in the other players’ hands. While it doesn’t directly say this in UNO The Office’s rules, in most versions of UNO it says if the final card forced a player to draw cards, that player draws the corresponding number of cards before the winner collects the cards.

The winner scores points from the cards they collected as follows:

Numbers – face value
Draw Two, Reverse, Skip – 20 points each
Wild, Wild Draw Four, Wild Kevin’s Famous Chili – 50 points each

Scoring in UNO The Office — These nine cards were left in the other players’ hands at the end of the round. The winner of the round scores points from them as follows. They will score 13 points from the number cards (3 + 4 + 6). The Draw Two, Reverse, and Skip score 20 points each. Finally they will score 50 points each for the Wild, Wild Draw Four, and Wild Kevin’s Famous Chili cards. The winner scores a total of 223 points.

You will keep a running total for each player. The first player to score 500 or more total points, wins the game.

UNO The Office FAQ

If you have any questions about how to play UNO The Office, leave a comment below on this post. I will try to answer any questions asked as best and as quickly as possible.

Components

19 Blue Cards (one 0, two each of 1-9)
19 Green Cards (one 0, two each of 1-9)
19 Purple Cards (one 0, two each of 1-9)
19 Yellow Cards (one 0, two each of 1-9)
8 Draw Two Cards
8 Reverse Cards
8 Skip Cards
4 Wild Cards
4 Wild Draw Four Cards
4 Wild Kevin’s Famous Chili Cards
Instructions

Year: 2020 | Publisher: Mattel

Genres: Card, Family

Ages: 7+ | Number of Players: 2-10 | Length of Game: 10-30 minutes

Difficulty: Light | Strategy: Light | Luck: High

For more board and card game rules/how to plays, check out our complete alphabetical list of card and board game rules posts.

Written By:

Eric Mortensen

Eric Mortensen is an owner and head writer on Geeky Hobbies since 2014. He is an avid board game player and collector with over 3,000 board and card games in his collection. Since 2014 he has written more than 1,100 board game how to play guides.