Merge Take

From BoardGameGeek:

A colorful collection of mysterious little slimes is growing out of control! These adorable creatures love to stick together, merging whenever they encounter others that resemble them. Collect as many as you can, but beware: what starts as a delightful group of tiny slimes can quickly become one enormous, troublesome blob. Sometimes, keeping your slimes apart is the best way to keep them happy. Merge Take is a must-follow trick-taking game in which players collect colorful slimes that merge into groups whenever their numbers are identical or consecutive, regardless of suit. Each trick awards all played cards to its winner, who must organize their collection into connected groups that can grow and combine as new cards arrive. Rather than rewarding the total number of cards collected, scoring favors maintaining numerous small groups, with each group of up to four cards worth one point, while groups of five or more incur penalties equal to their size. A revealed card determines the trump suit, and a hidden card becomes a shared value copied by every player's special Trace Slime during final scoring. Winning a trick that creates or extends a group of at least four cards also passes the next lead to the player on the winner's left, introducing an additional tactical consequence to collecting too many slimes.