“I’m drawing a long, straight line to the Octopus’s Right Eye”

Each player grabs a drawing board and a dry-wipe pen. The boards are all the same, and all have a grid of little drawings on them. A heart, a pencil, a hand, etc. The active player chooses a word from a card and draws that thing on their board. Here’s the twist though. As they’re drawing, they explain what they’re drawing to the rest of the players, who then draw the same thing on their boards. At least, they try to.

You see, when you’re the active player you can only use a very limited set of words to describe what you’re drawing. ‘A straight line’ is fine, as is ‘a semi-circle’. You can also use basic directions, like ‘up’ and ‘down’, as well as referring to any of the pictures printed on your board. You are not allowed, however, to give descriptions of complex shapes. You can’t say “I’m drawing a cylinder”, nor can you use terms like zig-zag or wavy lines.

You can see where this starts to get both complicated and hysterically funny at times. The person describing their drawing is doing it against the trickling sands of an hourglass, and scores points if people correctly guess the thing they’re describing. Each guessing player is also trying to be the first to guess what the thing is. The first person to guess correctly gets bonus points. Do you jump the gun and assume that long semi-circle was part of a mushroom, only to later find it was the canopy of a parachute?

“This line is coming straight down from the middle of that last line, until it’s level with the thumb on the hand”

What I love about It’s a Balloon!? is the constant temptation the game throws at you. If you’re the person drawing you can play it safe and opt for the easy word on the card, or take a risk and go for the harder one. Given the choice of ‘comb’ or ‘hot dog’, comb is the easier word to draw and explain. But if you go for ‘comb’ you only get one point per correct guess, vs two points for ‘hot dog’. The person explaining can get up to six points on their turn, so is it worth hoping only three people manage to guess your hot dog, or play it safe and look for six people to guess comb?

The guessers face the same dilemma too. The first person to guess grabs the golden wooden marker from the table. Guessing correctly earns you a point, but if you guess correctly AND you’re holding the golden marker, it’s worth an additional three points. How soon can you be sure though? Is the simple shape you’ve drawn as difficult as it’s going to get because they were describing something simple, or is there still a key piece of information to come?

As with so many other games in this style, most of the fun comes after the round. Seeing what other people have drawn is really funny, especially when you realise that it was your bad description which caused everyone else to get something wrong.

Final thoughts

I first came across It’s a Balloon!? at last year’s Gridcon. It was a hit at the convention, and I could quickly see why. Simple, accessible, and a lot of fun. I had to order a copy from France, because despite the game being printed in English, you couldn’t get it in the UK. PD Verlag have since righted this, and it looks like stock is starting to arrive on Blighty’s shores.

If you enjoy games like Pictionary, Telestrations, or A Fake Artist Goes to New York, you’ll have a great time with It’s a Balloon!?. The boards are substantial and chunky, the rules are easy, and it’s just a lot of fun.

Along with the other games I’ve covered recently – Secret Identity, Green Team Wins, and Medium – It’s a Balloon!? is a game that you might not have heard of but definitely deserves a place on your party game shelf.

It’s a Balloon!? (2023)

Design: Mads Fløe
Publisher: PD Verlag
Art: David Schneider
Players: 3-8
Playing time: 15-30 mins

The post It’s A Balloon!? Review appeared first on Punchboard.

Playing to the crowd

The underlying concept of Green Team Wins is reading the room and choosing what you think the most popular answer will be. In each round, you’re given a prompt and you’re asked to write your answer down on your drywipe board. Prompts come in one of three types: Best of Three, where you choose the answer you think is the most popular, This or That, where you pick one of two options, or Fill in the Blank, where you’re given a word and have to fill in the associated word.

An example is something like the Best of Three card “What flavor should green be?”. You’ve got a choice of Lime, Apple, or Watermelon as answers, so you pick the one you want and write it down. To reiterate the whole idea of the game, you’re not writing what you think should be the correct answer – which is clearly Lime – instead, you’re trying to guess what everyone else is going to write.

If you’re reading this thinking “This all sounds awfully familiar” there’s a chance you fall into one of two camps (or both). If you’re of a certain age, you might remember the TV game show Family Fortunes. “We asked 100 people what their favourite crisp flavour is… you said Hedgehog, our survey said…”

The other camp is folks from the UK who have played some of the excellent games from Big Potato Games, especially Herd Mentality, which is essentially the exact same concept, but in a game with a squishy pink cow. The titular Green Team is just a cardboard tile which each player has which governs scoring. You all start on the orange team side of the tile. When you answer, if you get the most popular, you flip it to the green side and get a point. If you were already on the green team, you get two points instead. Get one wrong, and you flip back to orange.

Party planning

There are a couple of things to bear in mind before you go racing out to buy a copy. Firstly is the number of players you’re planning to have battling wits. The original printing of Green Team Wins played up to 12 people, which is a good number for a party game. The current – and as I understand it from what 25th Century Games say here, all future printings – only supports up to six players.

Bear in mind that all I’m talking about here is the supplied materials in the box. You can play with as many people as you like if you supply paper and pens, but if you want the drywipe board and pens experience, you need more copies of the game to combine together. Not ideal, but not the end of the world.

I used to assume that most of my readers are from my side of the pond, but things have changed over the last year or two, and now I have twice as many US readers as UK!. So, howdy folks! The other potential sticking point is for us here in the UK. There are US-centric references in some of the cards that mean you might want to skip them. Filling in the missing word to go after the prompt ‘Candy’, for instance, doesn’t hit the same way over here.

Final thoughts

I was over the moon to find Green Team Wins in stock over here just before Christmas. It’d been on my wishlist for a long time, awaiting a new printing. I knew what I was getting, and it didn’t disappoint. My family had a great time over Christmas playing it on multiple occasions.

We had to throw in some Just One easels and make our own green team/orange team tiles when we played with more than six people, which works but just feels a bit disjointed. I think I may pick up a second copy so I can play up to 12 people at conventions and parties. I have Herd Mentality already (review here), which I love too, but it lacks the three categories of prompt cards.

If you’re in the UK and are finding it hard to get Green Team Wins, I recommend getting Herd Mentality. It’s worth it for the squishy pink cow alone, and it also supports more players out of the box. If you can get a copy for a decent price though, and if six players is enough for you, Green Team Wins is a must-have for your party games shelf. Hysterical stuff, highly recommended.

Green Team Wins (2022)

Design: Nathan Thornton
Publisher: 25th Century Games
Art: Matt Paquette & Co.
Players: 3-6
Playing time: 15 mins

The post Green Team Wins Review appeared first on Punchboard.

Deep Impact

The first thing you’ll notice about the game is the collection of big, squishy dice. Asteroids? Diceteroids? Whatever, they’re squidgy, vibrant, and they look like they were made for giants with anger issues. They’re also incredibly tactile. I mean seriously, seriously good fun to play with. In the aforementioned burrito game, the titular burritos were also squishy, but not in a ‘toss up and down in your hand’, fiddly, juggley, kind of way, not like these asteroids. You’ll notice that the asteroids include all the standard dice types for a tabletop RPG. You’ve got a D6, D8, D10, D12, and a D20, which is really cool. Firm bouncy, and satisfying to play with, like so many of the best things in life. They might even be the gentle nudge you need to get your hardcore D&D friend to emerge from behind their GM screen and engage in some primal tomfoolery.

Playing the game is simple enough that the rules are printed on a three-fold sheet of paper. Everyone plays a card from their hand, face-down, and then they’re all revealed. Most show one of the dice on them, and there are a couple of special cards too. If yours is the only card showing a particular die – congratulations! – you just take it. If two or more of you play the same card, however, it’s battle stations. The players who matched scramble to grab that die and throw it at the other person. Imagine Cobra Paw, but you could throw the tile at the other people. If you hit the other person, you add the loser’s card to your score pile. If you miss, you can expect it to be picked up and returned with all the haste of a Happy Meal box full of turds.

When everybody has licked their wounds, and the losers take what’s left in the pool of unclaimed dice, you move on to the part where you score the majority of the points. The player with the die with the most sides throws it onto the table. Then the next biggest die, and so on. The trick here is to aim to knock the other dice to change their scores. There is nothing as satisfying as picking up your feeble D6, aiming at the D20 with an 18 or something ridiculous on it, and knocking it down to single figures. Even if you don’t win the round, there’s this delicious, spiteful part of your brain which is doused with dopamine when you prevent some smug git from winning. It’s a glorious feeling, and it abounds in Asteroid Dice.

Abounds, I tell you!

Final thoughts

This was never going to be a big review. It’s a game about chucking squidgy things at your mates. I’ve just posted reviews of Skymines (here) and Beyond The Sun (here) which are space games that take themselves seriously, but Asteroid Dice is a stupid, raucous blast. Throwing stuff at people is fun, and I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise. I’ll fight them with squidgy dice from 3ft.

The best advice I can give you if you’re thinking about backing the game, or picking it up if you’re reading this post-Kickstarter, is to consider two things. Firstly, who will you play it with, and secondly, where will you play it? If your answer is ‘With the elderly and toddlers in a china & knife warehouse”, then it’s not for you. In all seriousness though, some people don’t like any kind of conflict at all, so be mindful of who’s around the table, and what space you have to play it in.

Asteroid Dice is silly and funny, and I can see it getting plenty of play in the garden and at barbecues over the summer. It’s a great game for non-gamers too if they’re willing to give it a go. While I wouldn’t necessarily endorse my own house rules for playing with my oldest mates of ‘loser takes a drink’ and ‘headshots only’, we certainly had a blast with it. It’s a game which won’t take up a lot of space and packs a lot of fun into a few cards and squodgy blocks. I’m looking forward to seeing what Camden Games come up with next.

The Kickstarter campaign starts on May 23rd 2023, and you can find it right here.

Preview copy kindly provided by Camden Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Asteroid Dice (2023)

Design: uncredited
Publisher: Camden Games
Art: uncredited
Players: 2-5
Playing time: 15 mins

The post Asteroid Dice Preview appeared first on Punchboard.

Format Games might not be a name you’re familiar with, especially if your usual board game cup of tea is the sort of game I often review here. It’s a game design studio headed up by two people: Laurence Emmett and Matt Edmondson. If you’re from the UK and recognise the latter of the two names, you might be wondering “Is that the same Matt Edmondson from BBC Radio 1?”. The answer is yes, it’s the same Matt Edmondson. One and the same.

Format Games specialise in small, lightweight party-style games. I met Laurence at this year’s UK Games Expo, at one of Asmodee’s areas. They’d recently signed a distribution deal with Asmodee, and were keen to get their games seen and played. After sitting down to chat with him about their games and how they came into being, I managed to grab an interview with the boys.

Interview

Adam: Before we get going, can you tell us who you are, and what brought you into the hobby of tabletop games?

We’re Matt and Laurence, owners of Format Games. Matt does all the inventing and games designing and Laurence runs the business day to day.

Matt: I have always loved playing games, and have to think up lots of them for my ‘day job’ of being a BBC Radio 1 DJ. A few years back I invented a game that found great success with Big Potato called Obama Llama, and it was a fantastic gateway to the industry. Since then I’ve invented quite a few games, and during the lockdown of 2020 set up Format Games with Laurence. I have regular games nights with my friends, and I genuinely love discovering new things to play.

Laurence: Luck and chance for me. I had a few small businesses in the service sector and was keen to move into online retail. During a chance discussion, Matt suggested we make a game that he’d been sitting on for a while called Ansagrams. We had absolutely no idea how to get this game to market, but we knew that between us, we had the skills to make it happen.

For each of you, which are your favourite games?

Matt: Where to start?! I love really simple, snack-able games with simple rules that are fast to learn and have really compelling gameplay. I love games like Gobbit, Dobble, and our own game Noggin which is the game I play the most regularly. I also love The Chameleon. Sometimes I’ll delve into more complex stuff- my favourite ‘big game’ is Colt Express. Every part of it is genius.

Laurence: A childhood favourite was Monopoly, I guess it spoke to my entrepreneurial spirit, and In my early 20’s I was quite a keen poker player. More recently Cross Clues is a fantastic game and I’d highly recommend it. Of our catalogue, I absolutely love Wheels Vs Doors (I’m a bit of a stat-nerd) and it combines poker-style gameplay with amazing stats – it’s perfect for me.

As I understand it, at least one of your games was created during the Covid lockdown. Were you toying around with game designs before the pandemic, or was Covid the catalyst?

Matt: I already had several games out in the market that I’d licensed to other manufacturers, but when lockdown hit a few of my television projects got delayed, so I found myself with some time. I had a raft of unfinished but fully-formed game ideas, so I suggested to Laurence that if he could help me with the ’serious bits’ of running a business, I could try and get some of them designed. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, but I love learning and I have quite a high tolerance for being bad at something before I get good at it, so I learned Illustrator via Youtube and just sort of figured it out. I think had the pandemic not occurred, I would have been unlikely to have been able to accelerate my skillset to the point where we’ve been able to output eight games titles within the first 18 months of the business. 

Laurence: Without doubt being stuck inside with nothing to do pushed us to produce Ansagrams. For me, one of my companies (a domestic cleaning franchise) was closed and I was genuinely concerned for its future, so I saw this as a way of diversifying. Even though we had zero experience of designing a game, I trusted Matt 100% and knew he would create something brilliant.

You self-published your first game, and sold it on Amazon I believe. It’s quite an investment to get started that way. Did you have a belief at that point that this could be a real success for you?

Matt: We had absolutely no idea what to expect. We both went into this treating it as an experiment. In terms of actual cash investment, it was surprisingly low, so the stakes weren’t high and we felt like we had nothing to really lose and everything to gain. Crucially we knew the game, Ansagrams, was really good. We’d played it loads with friends and family, and we ordered about 3000 copies of it. I assumed it’d take us over a year to sell them all, but they sold out within two weeks, which was amazing and also a little frustrating as we could definitely have sold more! Once we saw how well that game had done, it was easier to conceive of this as being a serious business that had a future beyond that first game.

Laurence: Yes we dipped our toe in initially. We had other sources of income, which was vital, as we waited over 18 months to actually pay ourselves for our work. We were very lucky to be in a situation together that allowed us to invest our time, and a little bit of money, without taking on substantial risk. I absolutely did think we could make it a success. We both have a pretty good track record at what we do, and we both felt confident that we had every chance of succeeding, but honestly, we had no idea it would get so far so soon.

Can you talk us through how the deal with Asmodee happened? It sounds like it was a whirlwind.

Laurence: Again it was luck and chance. Following on from Ansagrams lightning sell-out over Christmas 2020, Matt and I approached John Lewis and they agreed to stock our game for 2021. At the same time, I was tendering for manufacture and called Asmodee’s UK office.

They politely informed me that they did not manufacture other companies’ games, but once I explained our situation, they made an offer to distribute Ansagrams for us, to John Lewis and other retailers across the UK. That was January 2021, and by April 2021, Matt magically invented three more games (Noggin, Egg Slam and So Wrong It’s Right) and suddenly we were a thriving games studio. By the time we demonstrated at Toy Fair 2022, our catalogue had grown to 8 games and the amazing reaction from retailers encouraged Asmodee to offer us a 3 years distribution deal, which for us was a total game changer.

Matt: It feels like we’ve been really fortunate to have met the right people at the right time. The games are seriously great, and the thing I want above all else is for people to play and enjoy them, so having a distributor with such a great track record and amazing reach is really important. With games like Noggin, in particular, they’ll live or die on great demonstrations – I truly believe if you play Noggin once, you’ll be playing it for the rest of your life, so we love what Asmodee has done with Dobble on the demonstration front and want to forge a similar relationship.

The deal with Asmodee is a huge thing. Has it changed any future plans for either of you, now that your games are being sold and distributed around the world?

Laurence: It’s turned my world upside down. After Toy Fair in January I made the decision to sell my cleaning company and take a back seat on the other businesses I am involved in. I’m now full-time Format Games, and I absolutely love it!

Matt: The entire thing has been a bit of an unexpected whirlwind. A lot of my life is embarking on fun creative projects and then seeing what sticks, but the pace of expansion with this one has been really astonishing. I’m going to keep coming up with games (in fact, I’m typing this up whilst on a flight back from some games meetings in NYC and I had an idea for a game about 15 mins after take off which is BRILLIANT, so I’ve started working on it straight away!) and Laurence’s role will be to help us grow the business both in the UK and internationally.

My readers know me as someone who loves more complex games, as well as family and party games. Does either of you have any plans or ideas for something heavier, a big box strategy game, or something similar?

Matt: I am in awe of the big strategy games, and when I play the really complex ones I often think ‘how did anyone come up with this?’. I’m not sure my mind is wired for creating that type of game (although never say never) and my mission in almost everything I do is to keep it as simple as I can. I want all of our games to be really accessible for both seasoned gamers and people who only play one game a year at Christmas. We’re going for mass market but with a playful and personality-driven tone. 

If there are any budding game designers out there, what advice would you give them to get started?

Matt: I think the first thing to do is to make a prototype of your game and then just play it with your friends loads. From that, you’ll work out which bits work and which levers to turn up or down to make the game more fun. I’d then also decide a route to market. For the first few years of my career, I was incredibly content licensing my games to other companies, and they always did an amazing job with them. I wouldn’t be able to run Format Games on my own, so if it wasn’t for Laurence my inventions would have ended up with other games studios or sat on my shelf gathering dust. It’s been a lot of work getting these different products out into the world in the quality we expect, and so I think if I was still a solo games designer I’d be pitching my game ideas to companies whose games I already love.

What’s next for Format Games? Do you have anything new on the way you’d like to share with us?

Matt: We’ve had fairly rapid growth and now have a slate of eight games (in just over a year!) so our plan is to focus on two of our big releases this year, a game called Karen – all about ridiculous one-star reviews found online, and Wheels VS Doors – a hilarious debating game with a brilliant betting mechanic and the most mind-blowing stats you’ve ever heard. I’ve got three or four other games I’m currently working on, but we’re trying to pace ourselves. I frustratingly have more ideas than we could ever hope to make, so it’ll be a case of seeing what’s working from our existing range and then trying to compliment it with new stuff.

Laurence: We are such a new business, you could arguably classify all of our games as new. This will be the first Christmas season that our games will be available in most retail outlets, and it’s our first proper launch from a pr/marketing perspective. In 2021 we had such limited stock available we had to launch in, and stay in, first gear, this year we can hammer the throttle a little more and we’re hoping that momentum will continue into 2023. We plan to release 2 games next year, Matt has so many ideas it will be a case of working out which 2 we run with and launching them at Toy Fair in Jan 23. Exciting times!

Finally, and maybe most importantly, which is the best biscuit?

Matt: This is a controversial answer, but I’ve just discovered I’m dairy intolerant (noooooooooo!) so I’m backing the Bourbon. It’s ‘accidentally vegan’ which means it doesn’t have any milk in it and is therefore a staple of my life now!

Laurence: Two compete for top spot. A dark chocolate digestive, and a chocolate hob-nob. Mainly for their superior dunking properties. But you have to time it right. There is nothing worse than losing half a hob-nob in your mug of tea.

And finally

If you’d like to know more about Format Games and their range of titles, head over to their site now.

If you enjoyed this article, consider supporting me via the Kofi link below. Monthly supporter memberships are now available.

The post Industry Spotlight: Format Games appeared first on Punchboard.

If you don’t know the name Big Potato, there’s a good chance you’ve seen, and maybe played, at least one of their games. Don’t Get Got? Obama Llama? The Chameleon? Herd Mentality? Over here in the UK, you can even find their games adorning the shelves of supermarkets and bookshops. With that kind of ubiquity, there might be a part of you that wonders if they’re actually any good, and more importantly, worth spending your hard-earned pennies on.

Wonder no more! The rather wonderful people at Big Potato Games sent me a selection of their games to play, so I made the most of the Christmas break to test them out. A collection of people from 9 to 70-something helped me out, and here’s what we thought.

Contents

Herd Mentality review

Snakesss review

Obama Llama review

The Chameleon review

A few words about Big Potato

Herd Mentality

Herd Mentality is that game you’ve seen on shop shelves with the black and white cow pattern box. It’s a party game for four to ten players, where the aim is to think the way you believe everyone else does. For example, the prompt might say ‘Best pizza topping’. That part of you that’s screaming “It’s boiled eggs! I love boiled eggs on pizza” has to take a back seat. Instead, you’ll probably want to answer with something like mozzarella or pepperoni.

If your answer is the same as the most-popular one when the answers are read out, you get a point! If, however, you’re the only person to give an answer, you’re given a pink rubber cow. While you have the “squishy pink pig-cow of failure” (as it’s known in my house), you can’t win, so you’d better hope someone else has some weird ideas too.

How is it?

Herd Mentality was our group’s favourite game of the bunch. It’s hilarious to see how some peoples’ brains work when they’re under pressure. It’s incredibly simple to learn, and we managed to play around a Christmas dinner table with seven people sat at it, even before clearing the dishes. The only negative is the absence of pens or pencils in the box, so you’ll have to pilfer them from another game, or in my case, my son’s pen box.

My litmus test for how kid-friendly party games are is how often I have to skip a card because my son wouldn’t understand it. Over three games of Herd mentality, I only had to skip three cards, which is fantastic. It’s a brilliant game that will only take about 20 minutes, so even those with the shortest attention span won’t get bored. It’s also the game which my extended non-gamer family members asked for the most. “Can we play that cow one again?” is high praise indeed.

Herd Mentality in Big Potato’s shop.

Herd Mentality (2020)

Designers: Rich Coombes, Dan Penn
Publisher: Big Potato Games
Art: n/a
Players: 4-10
Playing Time: 20 mins

Snakesss

Snakesss is a game of social deduction and trickery, which are things I love in a game. You don’t often see them used in mass-market games, so I was delighted to see it done in this one. In Snakesss, the players have a couple of minutes to collectively answer a multiple-choice question. Sounds easy enough, but there’s a fly in the ointment. Or more accurately, some snakes. The snakes are players who know who the other snakes are, and they score their points by convincing the rest of the players to choose the wrong answer.

If this sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because it’s a twist on many other social deduction games, including my all-time favourite – The Resistance. It only takes one example round to learn, and then you’re up and running. Or slithering, if you’re one of them sneaky snakes. The addition of a third role – The Mongoose of Truth – is great, as it adds a player who you know cannot be a snake.

How is it?

Snakesss was my personal favourite of the games we played. I’m a long time lover of The Resistance, so to see it dressed in a fancy new trivia quiz onesie is great. The difficulty level of the questions seems to be pretty spot-on, although there were a few that the majority of the players already knew. Player count is important too. It says 4-8 players on the box, but as with any game like this, more is better, and I wouldn’t want to play it with fewer than five people. If you’ve ever had your kid subject you to multiple games of four-player Among Us, you’ll know what I mean.

The biggest thing to consider before you take on any social deduction game – Snakesss included – is the group of players you’ll be playing with. Some people absolutely hate bluffing and lying in games, and if you’ve got someone in your group like that, they probably won’t enjoy it. The one thing it has going for it that games like Werewolf and The Resistance don’t, is that there’s less ‘finger in the face’ accusations, and it feels more light-hearted. Great fun, I’ve got a lot of time for Snakesss.

Snakesss in Big Potato’s shop.

Snakesss (2021)

Designers: Phil Walker-Harding
Publisher: Big Potato Games
Art: Ben Drummond
Players: 4-8
Playing Time: 20 mins

Obama Llama (2021 edition)

Obama Llama was first released in 2015, and it’s obviously done very well for itself. There was a follow-up – Obama Llama 2 – three years later, and now we have a 2021 version. It’s a really simple premise for a game. A player on your team gives you a clue, and you have to come up with a rhyming answer. They might have to describe the clue, read the pre-written clues to solve answers, or even act it out, charades-style.

For example, if I read out a card that says ‘The musical genius who loved wearing purple refuses to ingest the meat part of spaghetti bolognese’, I’d hope you’d reply with “Prince won’t eat Mince”. These answers all earn points, which get used to flip cards in the middle of the table, like those card-matching memory games. If you find two cards that rhyme, your team keeps them as a point at the end of the game.

How is it?

There’s a reason this game’s been going for seven years. It’s good fun, and feels like one of those classic party games like Balderdash. One warning I would give, if you’re a 40-something like me, is that a lot of the matches are celebrity-based. I watch very little TV, so some of the people I just had no idea of. That only really becomes a problem on cards where you have to make up the description yourself, but it’s worth remembering if you’re going to play with kids or older people. Did I just refer to myself as older people?

My sister-in-law in particular absolutely loved this game, and wanted to play it again straight after. The only potential problem Obama Llama faces is the same as any game that uses cards as prompts. If you play it loads, you’ll start to know the cards too well, and know the answers as soon as the prompts are given. That said, you’re talking about a game that’s just the wrong side of twenty quid, so it’s not the end of the world, and there are another two versions still out if you need to pick up more. Good fun, and it’s a really good ice-breaker too if people don’t know one another well.

Obama Llama in Big Potato’s shop.

Obama Llama (2021)

Designers: Matt Edmonson
Publisher: Big Potato Games
Art: Ben Drummond
Players: 4-99
Playing Time: 30 mins

The Chameleon

The Chameleon is a game which Big Potato didn’t send to me, it’s just one I bought for myself. It’s another game of social deduction, and it’s one I really enjoy. In each round one person is the chameleon. An imposter. A fraudster trying to fit-in with the rest of the players. Everybody else has a code card, which, when combined with rolling a couple of dice, points to a word on a card full of answers.

This is where the fun begins. Everyone – chameleon included – has to say one word related to the correct word on the card. The chameleon obviously has no idea which word it is, so needs to takes cues from the other players, and try to blend in. Hence the name of the game. At the same time, the players who know the answer don’t want to be too obvious, lest the chameleon catch-on. At the end of the round, everyone points at who they think the chameleon is, and either win or lose.

How is it?

I’m slightly biased here, because the game of The Chameleon reminds me of another of my favourites, Spyfall. Happily, it brings in touches of another of my favourites – Codenames. The mixture of both is done so nicely that it really feels distinctly different to both of them. Splicing two different party games together can’t be an easy thing, I imagine it’s very easy to create The Homer instead of an Indominus Rex.

It’s another game that theoretically works from three players upwards, but realistically only really shows its true colours (ironic, given the titular reptile) with five or more. It’s truly great fun, and I really look forward to playing The Chameleon. If you’ve played Codenames to death and need something fresh, definitely look at this game. It’s a great intro to social deduction too, in much the same way as Spyfall is. It’s not as accusatory as some, and it feels nice and light.

The Chameleon in Big Potato’s shop.

The Chameleon (2017)

Designers: Rikki Tahta
Publisher: Big Potato Games
Art: Ben Drummond, Zoe Lee
Players: 3-8
Playing Time: 15 mins

A few words about Big Potato Games

I don’t always do this, but I really wanted to take a moment to just talk about the publisher of these games, Big Potato Games. I’m a big proponent of British game designers and publishers, and it’s fantastic to see Big Potato succeeding the way they are. What makes it extra-special for me, is in all the ways they go the extra mile.

They’re already one of the leaders in terms of being eco-friendly, with initiatives like planting a tree for each game sold, reducing packaging, and removing plastics from their games, as part of their Green Tatos scheme. I noticed it when I was opening the games. There’s no shrinkwrap, and even the cards are held in decks by paper ties that say ‘I used to be shrink’. It’s going to become a bigger issue across the industry in the next few years, so it’s good to see publishers doing it before they have to.

They’ve done game trade-in schemes with games shops, they offer free print-and-play versions of some games, and even offer free replacement parts for life. The number of times I’ve seen their games added in charity raffles and events is crazy. It’s these little extras which I love, especially when it comes from a company putting out genuinely great games.

For the sake of transparency I should also state that I haven’t been paid for saying any of this, or for covering their games. The links I put below each review aren’t affiliate links, I’ve got no vested interest in you buying their games. I just like their games, and believe in what they’re doing.

Have you played any Big Potato games? Which ones, and what did you think? Let me know in the comments, or come and find me on Twitter.

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Panettone or Pantone?

The board for Hues and Cues is simultaneously simple and gorgeous. It resembles something like a paint chart, or a colour picker if you’ve ever used something like Photoshop. I took this game to a convention recently, and it certainly turns heads. This might not sound like a big deal, but the huge swathe of colours is really good at drawing people’s attention. Another thing it has going for it is just how simple the game is to explain.

Take a card, and choose one of the four colours on it in secret. Each has a grid reference to find on the main board. Give everybody else a one-word clue to the colour, and ask them to place their first cone on the square they think matches the clue. Once everyone has had a guess, give a two-word clue and let people guess in reverse order. The closer you are to the correct colour, the more points you score.

You now know how to play Hues and Cues. Seriously, that’s it, and that’s what makes it a fantastic game for a large group. It supports up to ten players, but with more than eight you might find it hard to place your guess markers down without disturbing the others already on the board. That sort of thing bugs me, but who knows, maybe your clan enjoys that kind of abject chaos. Who am I to judge? The board is really glossy too, which makes it a pain to photograph, but ideal for wiping off dropped bits of Christmas cake.

Kaleidoscope

Hues and Cues is another game like Anomia, in as much as it’s amazing at breaking your brain. You pick up a card and see a bright pink square, and laugh internally how stupidly easy this game is. But now you have to give a one-word clue to this precise shade of pink, and suddenly the only words you know are Barbie and Flamingo. You’ve seen hundreds of pink things during your life, but can you remember any of them? Not a chance. Your brain is a sieve, and your knowledge of colours is but spilled flour on the kitchen counter of ignorance.

The hilarity that ensues from some peoples’ clue-giving is contagious, and enough to draw anyone to the table. You don’t really know your friends and family until you know what colour they think ‘mint’ is. I played a game with a group, and the first clue given was ‘sandy’. Five plastic cones took centre stage, occupying the beige-y colours near the middle of the board. He looked horrified, thought hard, and said ‘mossy sand’ as his second clue. Maybe it was because we’d had a couple of drinks by this point, but a couple of people were crying laughing as he tried to explain why sandy had a greenish hue in his mind.

True, there are bunches of colours on the board which are almost indistinguishable from one another, but nuance is the secret sauce that makes Hues and Cues so tasty. It’s the difference between Dairy Milk and aubergine. It’s grass versus lime versus aircraft primer.

Yes, aircraft primer was a clue I was given.

Shades of grey

This all makes Hues and Cues sound amazing, and it is, mostly. The only drawback I’ve found is it doesn’t retain the same level of novelty and excitement through repeated play with the same group. It’s still good fun, but it doesn’t feel as interesting as it did the first time. It’s definitely a consideration if you were thinking of buying it as a game for your regular group. I’ve found myself reaching for Wavelength and Codenames again. It’s also not nearly as entertaining if you’re playing with just three or four people, so save if for when you’ve got a group together around a table.

If you’re looking for something fun and different to play from time to time, however, Hues and Cues is a great choice. Someone I played it with described it as ‘Battleships with colours’, and it’s a pretty good description. It’s the sort of game that was born for house rules. The standard game as described in the rulebook feels like it ends pretty quickly, and more than once I’ve played with people who’ve said “Shall we go round once more?”. If you’re worried about couples who know each other too well having an unfair advantage, restrict their choices to a category, like foods only for example.

Final thoughts

Hues and Cues does what it sets out to do, really well. It’s a lightweight, original, fun game for a group. It has universal appeal and pretty much anyone can enjoy it. I’m not sure how well it works for colour-blind people though, having said that. It’s a good game to add to a shelf of party-type games, like Wavelength, Codenames, The Resistance, Telestrations, and Balderdash. Social experiences.

I don’t know whether the feeling of it getting old, quickly, with the same group is just because of how many different games I’ve played, but it’s a consideration all the same. If you’ve got a board game group and you’re looking for something to start or end games nights, Hues and Cues is a great choice. It’s a really good ice-breaker for people who feel self-conscious too, as there’s no acting, bluffing, or social deduction.

Fans of simple games to bring the family together will have a great time with Hues and Cues, and the lack of text means the very young (or very old) don’t have to worry about reading. Is it worth buying? Yes, absolutely, just as long as it’s not your only party game.

Review copy kindly provided by The Op Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Hues and Cues is available from our sponsor – Kienda. Sign-up using this link to get 5% off your first order over £60.

Hues And Cues 2020

Designer: Scott Brady
Publisher: The Op Games
Art: n/a
Players: 3-10
Playing time: 30 mins

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If this style of pulp spy thriller action is your thing, NewSpeak was made for you. It’s a group game in the style of Codenames, Decrypto, and Spyfall. In a dystopian future, what we see and experience is controlled by The Moderators, à la The Matrix. A group of Dissidents (one team) is planning covert actions to hack the servers controlling the population’s view of the world, and need to communicate the target locations to their teammates. The Moderators (the other team) are listening in, however, so cunning clues and codewords are the order of the day.

The art of conversation

The Lead Dissident player is trying to feed the others their target location. They do this by having a good old-fashioned chin-wag, cross-referencing key words against a code card. The Dissident team are trying to get clues to the chosen location by listening to the Lead Dissident. They’re trying to pick up on certain words, then cross-reference those words on their card to figure out the true meaning.

It’s probably easiest to explain by way of an example – the one included in the rulebook. Let’s say my code card has these pairs of words on it, among others:

Big – Liquid
Fact – Glass
Happy – Loud
Life – Party

The conversation might sound like this:

“She seemed down today. Do you think she’s happy with her life?”

“The fact is, we can’t read too much into it without knowing the bigger picture”

If the team picked up on the correct words, they’d now have Loud, Party, Glass, and Party, which in turn should lead them to the Nightclub.

Cracking the code

The Moderators are trying to identify which set of codes the others are using. It’s very difficult in the first round, and as a Moderator you’ll find yourself trying to pick up on the words you think are the code words. It’s often after the first location is revealed that you can start to make connections, and try to piece things together.

I really like how the players start to get inventive once they get the hang of the game. The clues get more vague, and instead of using the words on the cards, synonyms start creeping in, in an attempt to obfuscate the real clues. Saying ‘food’ for example, might turn into “we’re going to have lunch”.

Those of you who have played Spyfall or Decrypto before will be able to see some strong similarities already between NewSpeak and those games, but this game adds another layer of nuance that I really enjoy. It’s a deeper, more-involved game than its counterparts. It’s actually one of the trickier deduction games to explain, and while it’s not actually difficult per sé, it’s a game that really benefits from an example round before you get into the game proper.

Final thoughts

NewSpeak is a great example of this style of game. As I mentioned above, fans of Decrypto, Spyfall and Codenames will probably really enjoy it. From personal experience, it can be quite difficult to get your players to engage in making up the nonsense sentences. I found some people can get quite self-conscious about it for some reason. Once the ice is broken though, it’s pretty smooth sailing.

I found the game to be at its best with four or five players, but your mileage may vary. When you play with your family, or close friends, it’s really tricky trying to hide your intentions from the Moderator. Some people just know you too well. I played this with a close group after a couple of drinks at a regular games night, and we had a hoot with it.

I wouldn’t recommend NewSpeak if you’re likely to be playing with three players, as the game shines best when you’ve got multiple Dissidents trying to guess at the same time, it makes the conversations and interactions much more interesting, and gives the Moderators more to think about. It’s a game best enjoyed with a group around a table – chatting, laughing, and trying to figure out just what the flipping heck is going on.

Review copy kindly provided by ITB Board Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

NewSpeak (2021)

Designers: Mark Stockton-Pitt, Fiona Jackson, Anthony Howgego
Publisher: ITB Board Games
Art: Zak Eidsvoog, David Thor Fjalarsson
Players: 3-6
Playing time: 30-60 mins

The post NewSpeak Review appeared first on Punchboard.

It’s a game in the style of those classics like Charades and Monikers, where players draw cards and try to do whatever’s said in them. Complete challenges, earn points, laugh, and get to know your guests a bit better. Let me tell you, when you play Final Challenge, you’re going to know everyone around the room a lot better than when you started.

Digging deeper

What most party games have in common is the shallow level of depth. That’s not to say they’re not fun, or clever, but for the majority of games there’s a familiar format: play a round, collect a point/card, rinse & repeat until there’s a winner. Final Challenge keeps this general formula, but adds another layer of game. The cards you collect for completing your challenges get played into a tableau in front of you, where they have two jobs.

Firstly, completed challenges grant you passive and active abilities. Passive abilities do things like halving the length of time your challenges last (many last until your next turn), whereas active abilities can be used once, and offer up things like swapping a card with one from the discard pile. “Why on Earth would I want to swap a card with one from the discard?”, you might ask yourself, and it’s a good question, one which leads on to where Final Challenge takes things one level deeper.

Completed challenge cards have a colour, and when you complete one of each colour in your tableau, the backs of them have a series of verbs, nouns and adjectives written on them. When read-out, they form a sentence which becomes your final challenge. For example, you might look down and find that your final challenge is “Hyperactive cavegirl flirts with a box while panting heavily”. Yes, that’s an actual example from a game I played. It’s a really clever way of adding a bit more Game to the game, and drives the competition. It’s great to have a clear game winning situation too, instead of just collecting a certain number of cards or something similar.

Know your audience!

Final Challenge is a game which should come with a big warning – Do not play with your family! Some of the things the game gets you doing are far better suited to a game night with a few drinks and your best friends. I don’t know your family, true, but I imagine most people aren’t too comfortable with giving their mum a massage until their next turn, or being ‘overly intimate’ with uncle Steve until your next turn.

It’s safe to say this isn’t a game for everyone. But then, not every game is. Cards Against Humanity is ridiculously successful, despite the fact that a lot of people find it intolerably offensive. While Final Challenge never gets as outright bad as Cards Against Humanity – there’s nothing like racism, sexism, or anything depraved – it’s the sort of game you’d play with the same kind of crowd.

It’s also worth saying that the base set of cards are definitely the more SFW, and with a little vetting you can probably come up with something you can play with your family. There are two expansion decks: Twisted and R-Rated. Twisted cards are pretty good fun, and offer lots of chances to get creative and imaginative. R-Rated speak for themselves, and will see you swearing and getting wildly inappropriate with other players. It’s a pretty cool thing to be able to tailor the game for the people you’re playing with, I’d like to see it with other party games in the future, instead of milking the brand and making ‘Family’ or ‘After Dark’ versions of games.

Final thoughts

Final Challenge is a lot of fun, if you enjoy that sort of game. There are a lot of people who can feel really self-conscious and don’t like to come out of their comfort zone, especially with all that’s happened in the world in the last two years. If you don’t like that sort of experience, I’d say go with something lighter like Telestrations, Codenames, or Wavelength. However, if you have a group that know each other really well, and like a bit of banter and a couple of drinks to unwind, I think you’ll love this.

I really like that Kerber Games have gone that extra step and turned it into a game of collecting coloured challenges, building a tableau, and working towards a definite winner. The game doesn’t just peter out at the end of the deck. You’re able to attack other players too. So if you were to draw a purple challenge, and you can see someone close to winning who already has a purple card, you can force them to take yours on. On the flip side, if there’s a card you’re really not comfortable with, you can ask for volunteers to take it on instead.

Final Challenge is a Marmite game. Groups of young adults with a couple of Babychams in them will have a wild time. 40-something groups of friends who’ve known one another their whole lives will be hooting with laughter. It’s just not a game you’d take to your game club though, or around for after Christmas dinner with the kids and Granny. Kerber Games have made a game which takes the beaten-to-death party game formula and brought it up a notch. If it sounds like your sort of thing, you and your gang are going to love it.

Preview copy kindly provided by Kerber Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

Final Challenge (2021)

Designer: Dusan Jovcic
Publisher: Kerber Games
Art: David Bilobrk
Players: 3-6
Playing time: 30-45 mins

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