Review Details

Codenames

Product Review (submitted on September 16, 2015):

Codenames is a great party game for non-gamers and gamers alike. In this game, a 5x5 grid of word cards is laid out and a multi-colored key card indicates which words belong to the blue team and which words belong to the red team. Some words are neutral and indicated by a beige/tan color and one word is the assassin word and indicated by a black color. Each team has one spymaster (clue giver) who gives a one-word clue followed by a number, indicating how many words on the grid are associated with the clue just given. If a correct word is guessed, that team places their corresponding colored spy card over the word and they can continue guessing until they guess all of the associated words. If a neutral word is guessed, a neutral card is placed over the word, the guessing team can no longer continue guessing and their turn is immediately over. If a team ends up guessing a word belonging to the opposing team, the opposing team gets to place their spy card over the word and the guessing team's turn immediately ends. If the assassin word is chosen, the guessing team immediately loses the game! If this is avoided, the first team to place all of their spy cards on the grid wins.

Codenames is a simple, fun game. It's one of those games that can definitely benefit from meta-gaming, because you're more likely to guess the intended words when you know how your spymaster thinks. I've played this game 8-player, with two teams of four players, 4-player with two teams of two, and I've also played it with the 3-player variant, where there are two spymasters and one guesser, so it's more like spymaster versus spymaster. I personally prefer it 4- and 3-player, with 3-player being my favorite. Three different minds trying to work together to guess clues in the 8-player game made the guessers second-guess themselves too much, but it was still super entertaining. With the 4-player game it was nice to have the team competition working in just partners. But with the 3-player game, it was interesting having two opponents trying to figure out how one single person thinks and work it to their personal advantage. This is a great game that is going to get a lot of play from my regular game group.