Once in a while a game comes out you know is going to be good. Especially if your job is trying to figure out what games will be awesome for the widest variety of people. Well I believe this game is going to be huge. Maybe even Codenames huge. What will stop it being so?:
1. It’ll be more expensive.
2. This has been made by an independent company via Kickstarter so the supply of the game may well be very low early on (it is already sold out at distribution 2 days after it was offered to stores!).
3. It’s crap.
Well, we’ll deal with those in a bit, but what is the game? It’s been designed by Wolfgang Warsch (The Mind, Quacks on Quedlinburg) and Alex Hague (Monikers, Metagame). A rich pedigree indeed. It is a team based game (4+ players), like Codenames, where one player will try and get their team to guess a point on a scale between two ideas. It’ll look like this at the start of a round:
Hot and Cold are the ideas. One of the players knows where the ‘bullseye’ is behind the blue screen. They needs to say something to help their team guess where that bullseye is. If it’s in the middle, maybe you say ‘porridge’, at the hot end, you say ‘lava’, on the cold side you say ‘outer space’. You get more points the more accurate you are so finding the exact word to match the spot if the key and it’s where the discussion begins. Your team will debate where the red dial should go, trying to read your intentions. Where would you put the dial for ’15 minute old custard’?
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You should have picked here if you were playing with me.
It gets even better than that. The big reveal is the most exciting part. You settle on a spot, then push the blue lever and it flies open to the cries of joy and agony of those playing. Being in the blue gets you 4 pts, the yellow 2pt. The other team also gets to guess if your team should have been more to the left or right and if you are outside the scoring zone on that side, they score.
Examples of the cards:
- I will be around $49.99, for the game and the gimmick it is worth it IMO.
- I hope there are reprints already in the works, else this will be a major issue.
- All reviews by those who have played it are extremely positive. It’s really easy to teach. Creates moments of exclaimation and has the gimmick hook that draws people in. It will be awesome!
It’ll be in the cafe to play and for a while to buy….
