Libellud One Key

Interesting game to play with others, really open yours mind to how others think.

I'm writing a review on behalf of my wife and my kid.According to them, it's very fun to play this game, and they're very happy!If them are happy, I'm happy!

The whole family loves playing this. It gets to the table almost every weekend. Definitely a favourite and totally recommend.

This is a fun, creative, cooperative game with plenty of expansion capabilityI received this game specifically to write a review. That said, I try to be honest and open in all my reviews.Normally, I include pictures, but I am leaving them off this time to see if that might be the reason the last posts were rejected.Bottom-line up-front: if you liked Dixit (by the same company), or you enjoy cooperative, creative games then you are likely to enjoy this one.Summary: The One Key is a game by the Libellud Game Company for 2-6 players, ages 8+. It says that you can play a game in 20+ minutes. Our groups' games ranged from 10 minutes to 40 minutes.This is a cooperative game. One player (leader) picks a tile and then selects ten other tiles and puts them in front of the other players. The other players do not know which is the chosen tile. The other players are attempting to eliminate all but the chosen tile. Each turn, the leader draws three tiles from the deck and then assigns the "nearness" of the tiles to the chosen tile by categorizing as green (closely related), yellow (somewhat), and red (not at all).Then, the other players have to eliminate other tiles based on all the input to that point. The first round they eliminate one tile. The second round two and on to the final round where four of the five remaining tiles must be eliminated.In our group, we played ten times, and we lost as a group eight times, the first eight times, and we won the last two, and that seemed like the future trend.In addition to using the provided tiles, this game has great extensibility and could be used with other games' tiles, with playing cards, with pictures, with school learning objectives, etc.On to the Standard Criteria …GO/NO GO Criterion• Complexity: (GO) The game is not complex. Each turn the leader draws three tiles and decides how closely they match the chosen, secret tile, and then the rest of the group eliminates tiles. Fairly straightforward.• Balanced: (GO ) It is a cooperative game; so, it is completely balanced.• Chance (GO) The only chance elements are which of the judging/matching tiles are drawn each turn, and that plays a smaller part than you might think given the nature of the pictures.• Clarity: (GO) The rules are clear, and the game comes with a lavishly illustrated manual.• Reasonable Time: (GO) Ten to forty minutes is a very reasonable time to play.Bonus Criteria• Social: This game promotes fun, cooperative interactions as the players need to discuss which tiles to eliminate.• Unique/Interesting Mechanics: The game components are literally works of art.• Informed: It is interesting to see what other players focus on in terms of similarity between the tiles. It is a way to get to know other friends better, and what they first notice and feel is significant. Some people focus on colors and schemes, others on numbers, ...• Rewards Throughout: Each turn you eliminate tiles and get closer to your goal.

Weird weather and start of school season meant this game burned a hole in the game cabinet for a while before we were able to have a game night with friends to play it. Finally we got a group of 8 together to play and we played 10 times before having to disband and get the kids to bed.First off, it took several of us reading the directions, repeatedly, to figure out how to play the game. It's not "difficult" but the directions are somehow hard to comprehend. The sticking point was whether we were to turn only one card or three cards on "round 1," and then to agree on whether rounds 2-4 each had 3 additional clue cards. We decided to go with 1, 3, 3, and 3 clues on each of rounds 1 through 4, respectively. We also had to do several games before figuring out a good operation for using the colored ranking tokens. We found having the leader keep the tokens in a pile, arrange them with the clue cards in the stand, and then "discard" the tokens with the clue cards so they would get "used up" throughout the rounds worked well to keep track of the rounds, and to make sure the leader would not "reuse" them. Of course, when out of "unrelated" tokens, several players took to just saying "I know this says highly related but it's not really related." So it kindof defeated the point of needing to be strategic on ranking, but whatever.The app doesn't display a time--not even an hour glass relative time. Instead when there's about a minute left, and then a few seconds left, it changes colors to give warnings. The operation of needing to tap the leader and the group circles wasn't intuitive, and it's hard to type in a clue card number without the group seeing, so we took to having the leader bring the cards and phone to a different room to deal with that. By the end we decided the app was pointless and that we'd rather just use a timer app on our phone.Also pointless turned out to be the round tracking card. The app keeps track of that, and then our method for using the ranking tokens meant the tokens "ran out" when all the rounds were done. We didn't use that past the second round of the first game.This game was fun and we had some laughs ... and some (lighthearted) arguments. Of course there's someone in the bunch who thinks the only thing that matters is color and shape, and then there's someone that looks deep into the meaning of the card and thinks they're related on a spiritual level that no one else understands. Out of 10 games we only managed to win 3 or 4.Having so many players (8) at a rectangular table made it a little challenging for everyone to be able to see the field and clues. Our players stayed in their seats and rotated the leader role. It might have worked better for being able to see if we'd had the leader always sit at the head of the table and swap seats instead of just rotate the cards. I'm not sure whether or not this game would be as fun with only 6 players, but I think 4 would be kindof meh. Aside from logistics of being able to see, playing with not too many more than 8 players would be OK.This was great for a game night. We try to rotate games but play a new "escape room" box about every-other time we get together with friends and fall back to Cards Against Humanity when we don't have anything else new or want to fill a little time before everyone arrives. I thought this game was fun to play and would also make a good "time filler" or something that can be played again and again without getting old since it's different every time. I wouldn't quite rank it up with Apples to Apples / Cards Against Humanity type of classics that everyone likes to play over and over for a laugh, but it's still good to have in the game collection in my opinion.