• We'll start with the team game Ghost Writer from Mary Flanagan, Max Seidman, and Resonym, a design for 4-8 players that features Password-style gameplay with each team trying to guess the same secret word. Ghost Writer was Kickstarted in early April 2021 ahead of a Q4 2021 release date. Here's how it works:
To set up Ghost Writer, divide players so that the Sun team and the Moon team each have one Spirit and up to three Mediums. The mediums on a team share a hand of seven question cards, and the spirits begin the game by choosing one of the five objects on a card as the secret object. On a turn, the mediums pass two question cards to their spirit, with sample questions like "What color is it most commonly?", "What fictional character has it or uses it?", and "If it were a musical instrument, what would it be?"
The spirit discards one question card face up, then returns the question card it's going to answer to their mediums, then slowly writes the answer one letter at a time for all to see. As soon as the mediums think they know what this clue word is, they yell "Silencio", and the spirit stops writing. The other team of mediums might see only the letter "Y", but if you know the question is "What color is it?", then you know the clue must be "yellow". To end your turn, draw two new question cards.
On a turn, instead of handing over question cards, you can attempt to guess the answer — and to do so you write like the spirits, one letter at a time. If you write an incorrect letter, the spirits will stop you, marking out your error, with your partial guess giving the other team more information. If you guess the entire word correctly, you win!
Here's an overview of this 3-8 player game, which is explained even more succinctly on the back of the box:
In Last Message, the victim of the crime gives clues over four rounds to help the detectives determine the identity of the criminal. To give clues in a round, the victim has 30 seconds in which to draw and write in a 3x3 grid — but before handing over these clues, the criminal can erase part of these drawings.
If the criminal is not identified by the end of the fourth round, they win the game; otherwise, the detectives and the victim win.
Here's how this tiny 2-5 player game that debuted in early April 2021 works:
To set up for the round, lay out the sixteen sheep tiles. While all other players close their eyes, Uly then swaps the wolf token for one of the sheep. The Polly players then place the sheepdog token on a tile and reveal it. If they already found Uly, they win the round, but if not the Uly player chooses two tiles adjacent either orthogonally or diagonally (whether Uly is on one of those tiles or not) and swaps them. Polly then moves to any adjacent tile and reveals it.
If Uly is still in hiding after eight tiles have been revealed, the Uly player wins the round and receives reward tokens; otherwise the Polly players receive rewards. After each player has been Uly once, whoever has the most rewards wins!
Gather your friends, tear a page of the Burn Book, and pass it around as you take turns answering scandalous questions about each other. Oh, and the best part? It's all totally anonymous.
Well, most of the time it is anyway. At the end of the round, each player gets to pick an answer that they'd like to reveal. If you wrote it, you have to come clean in front of everyone — so maybe don't write anything that's too mean.
In Snakesss, you deal out the cards and try to answer a multiple-choice question with the rest of the players. The more people who get it right, the more points you cash in — unless, of course, you get one of the snake cards. All the snakes already know the answer, so their job is a bit simpler. To score points, they have to sabotage the discussion and mislead the other players.