Sudden Death is a surround placement type of game. During your turn you place down 1 of 3 different plastic pieces made up of either two, three or four squares. The board consists of 441 squares and each player starts on his own side. The object is to block the other players to prevent them from playing any more pieces. You are allowed to jump over one square. To speed up game play, the designers included a button connected to a 9-volt battery and to a timer in the middle of the board. The button slowly rises and after a certain number of seconds, a buzzer goes off. If the buzzer goes off, you pay a penalty of losing 2 two-square pieces. The timer can be set to go either quickly or slowly.