Shedding games
In a shedding game there is nothing to collect and nothing to score. You are simply trying to have no cards left, and everyone else is trying to stop you.
These are the loud games. Where a trick-taking game is an exercise in restraint, a shedding game is a scramble: you play cards onto a communal pile as fast as the rules allow, and the whole tension is whether you can keep playing or will be forced to pick up.
Two sub-families are represented here. In a matching game like Switch, you play a card that matches the pile by suit or rank, and the design lives in the power cards — a two makes the next player draw, an eight skips them, an ace changes the suit, a black jack is a five-card punishment and a red jack cancels it. The pleasure is in holding the right weapon until the moment it hurts most.
In a climbing game like Thirteen — Vietnam’s Tiến lên, one of the most-played card games in the world — you must beat the previous play with a higher card or a higher combination of the same shape. Passing is allowed, and knowing when to pass rather than spend a good card is most of the skill. Idiot sits between the two, adding face-down table cards you must play blind at the end of the hand, which guarantees the last few turns are pure nerve.
None of these games take long to learn and none of them reward long-term planning the way Bridge does. What they reward is timing, and an accurate read on how desperate the other players have become.