Czech Games Edition | Codenames | Party Game | Ages 10+ |
Czech Games Edition | Codenames | Party Game | Ages 10+ | 2-8 Players | 15 Minute Playing Time
Codenames Wins the 2016 Spiel des Jahres
Codenames from designer Vlaada Chvátil and publisher Czech Games Edition has won the 2016 Spiel des Jahres, Germany’s game of the year award, which is intended to highlight an outstanding design that would be ideal for German families — and if you happen to belong to a family of some other nationality, there’s a good chance that you’ll enjoy the game as well.
| Dimensions: | 22.86 x 16.51 x 6.99 cm; 580.6 Grams |
| Model: | CGE00031 |
| Material: | Cardstock |
| Colour: | One Colour |
| Pack Quantity: | 1 |
| Batteries Required: | No |
| Batteries Included: | No |
| Age: | 10 years and up |
| Assembly: | No |
| Dimensions: | 22.86 x 16.51 x 6.99 cm; 580.6 Grams |
| Material: | Cardstock |
| Quantity: | 1 |
This was a gift. It arrived with a postage label stuck on the plastic round that was around the box with no outer packaging at all. I had no option but to remove the plastic and give the gift unsealed. It could easily have been dented or damaged in the post but thankfully was not. I was very disappointed. However the game itself is very good as I have played it myself.
This is a really fun game for groups, it works equally well if you know your teammates really well or not at all. Simple word association concept to pick up but it does get you thinking. Also doesn’t take too long to play. Would definitely recommend it.
Very fun game but can be a bit complicated to learn and slow to play. In our experience you need at least 6 players to make it work best. But good game overall.
I have played this game many times with many different groups of people and everybody loved it. You need at least 4 people but it’s better for 6 people (two teams of 3) or even 8 (two teams of 4)
Since then I got the game for myself and played it with people I know and it was so much fun.
The only downside I can think of that one side of the card is really hard to read (as you need to arrange it in a 55 matrix, one side facing one side of the people the other facing the other side of the table) and I wish they had both side written the same way: big text on white space, not the cursive brown text.
One of my favourite game to play with friends! It requires you to know your friends well and how they may interpret your clues. Came in good condition, no complaints. 🙂
Bought this game for use over Christmas as had been recommended it by a friend. Easy to learn, good fun, and even playable with family members who were quite intoxicated! Couldn’t ask for more!
Not much to say, a very simple game to explain and understand and also relatively fast paced (you can decide on how many rounds you would like to play for). Great entertainment.
A good game once you read the rules, we had a trial run, that helped us understand what to do.
It’s a really good game, makes you really think and plan what word to use. to help your team drack the code
My family aren’t the best at picking up games quickly but they all got on board with this very quickly and even those that didn’t like games enjoyed it very much! They didn’t want me to put it away. Caused lots of laughter and a great collaborative game with an element of competitiveness too!
Bought this after playing the original game, to play with my partner as she doesn’t enjoy competitive two player games to much, first time we played, we ended up have 6 games back to back, she loved it and we both started to quickly improve and finally won a couple of games. Lots of replayability and no game will be the same because of the random key cards and plenty of word cards, highly recommend for 2 players, if you love word games you’ll probably love this.
We love this game so much! We love the odd pictures and the limitless possibilities. It’s good for kids and adults – the kids usually win!
You can set up and play an entire game in as little as 10 minutes so plenty of time to play again and again!
A great time with my 11yr old. Very quick to pick up. We have the original version but this one is very clever in how it makes two player counts fun. We prefer cooperative games so this is fantastic.
The game in a nutshell is trying to link numerous words with a single clue. It’s hard to win but a lot of fun trying!
The base game with two teams (4+ players) is just really good fun. This is one where you might get a bit of an advantage if you know your teammates well, but not so much that you can’t do well with a stranger. It’s easy to learn and set up. I like the feature of being able to quickly start a new round without dealing out new cards, you can just turn over all the cards from the previous round.
The concept for the game is excellent, but firstly there are nowhere near enough name/word cards, so if you play it quite often you quickly come back to the same cards (this will probably be with different combinations, but still it is just less interesting we found to have the same cards come up again and again).
I’m not sure why they supplied so many code cards, as they don’t matter so much, and can be turned round or upside down to change things round…
The main issue I have though is that you can be as creative as you like and sometimes there is no way on earth you can connect the words you have on the board, which becomes a bit frustrating….
The Good:
* Incredibly easy and simple to learn the basics
* Quick set-up, games can be quick or long dependent on players’ choice
* Rewards creative thinking and broad knowledge, as-well-as simplistic face-value pairing of words
* Literally almost impossible to play the same game twice; almost endless possibilities due to multiple combination conditions. For the nerds: estimated possible unique games: 3.19140000E+50. Better get a comfy chair…
The Bad (these are totally subjective):
* The more players the better, which makes organising a game more difficult. 6+ allows for significantly more flexibility and variety (lockdowns and Covid makes this a very current issue)
* Can be heavily dependent on being aware of the interests and knowledge of your teammate(/s)
* Some games can be slow/unsatisfying, with repeated 1 word rounds due to randomised ‘targets’ causing (subjectively) unmatchable words
Box contents:
* 200 x double-sided Codenames cards
* 40 x Key cards
* 8 x Red Agent cards
* 8 x Blue Agent cards
* 1 x Double Agent card
* 1 x Assassin card
* 7 x Innocent Bystander cards
* 1 x ~1:30 min sand time
Fantastic game. We were introduced to it by some friends in lockdown over Zoom and really liked it so we bought our own to subsequently play with other groups. We play over Zoom by fixing the camera to film the board (5×5 grid of single word cards) and then send the card that identifies the spies to the spymasters by WhatsApp. Easy game to learn and different every time due to the volume of word cards, sometimes easier to link them than others!
Great game. Split into two teams with one person in each team trying to think of a word that will help his/her team to guess the words on the cards in front of them. Not as simple as it sounds. Each team has their own cards to guess but could end up guessing the opponents cards so helping them. The idea is to try and use one word to guess more than one card. Takes some thinking about but great fun! Would recommend
Although the rules of this game seem complicated and long to be mastered, practice will make you feel like a real spy involved in chain web of actors. The only regret is that the game ends too soon which leaves you in the wake of reality with a lack of mystery and adrenaline. Ideal for date nights as it is better played with two people rather than with a larger number.
I think I saw some reviews from people saying it’s hard to set up and initially understand. It is but once you’ve got all the pieces out and read the instructions, it’s a simple game for almost anyone to enjoy. Me and my partner wanted a game to play with just two people and this was really good fun. You’re on the same team essentially too which gives it a different edge. Good fun, we would recommend!
A great group game to raise the competitive levels and force people into socialising
This is by far one of my favourite boardgames. It’s easy to learn and super fun to play. It even has a 2 player mode, so I can always play with my partner, although I think it’s even better to play in a 5-6 people group.
CODENAMES.
In Codenames, two teams compete to see who can make contact with all of their agents first. Spymasters give one-word clues that can point to multiple words on the board. Their teammates try to guess words of the right color while avoiding those that belong to the opposing team. And everyone wants to avoid the assassin.
It really makes you think hard!
Also, I found it’s a great game for kids and non-english speaking people to improve their vocabulary.
I have played this game a dozen times already since I bought it and I can’t recommend it enough.
Always immensely fun trying to link words together as you see the turn ‘clock’ tick down. There are something like 400 additional words (can be mixed with existing Codenames) and plenty grid squares, no games will be the same. Also they have included a world map with cities that has various difficulty settings; almost like a mini campaign.
Games last 15 – 20 mins and once you finish one, you’ll want to immediately start another. Sign of a great, fun game.
In basic terms the game is made up of a grid of 25 words and two teams (red and blue). Each team nominates a spymaster who has to try and get their team to guess their words first. A grid card is taken at random by a spymaster and will show the spymasters which words their team needs to guess. This card also shows which team goes first. The team going first has 9 words, the team going second has 8 words to help make the game fair. Then teams take turns with the spymaster giving a one word clue trying to link as many of their words as possible. The clue is followed by the number of words the spymaster is linking it to. For example the grid might have the words England and France, if your team has these words and no other countries are on the board the clue could simply be “countries, 2”. It gets more tricky when there are other similar words on the board e.g. if America is on the board but that is incorrect for your team. Play goes on until a team find all their words.
Each game starts out quite relaxed but the tension builds every game when it nears its end. It really is funny to see how involved everyone gets. The beauty lies in the simplicity of the rules as even newcomers can understand the game within one round. Each round only takes 10-15 minutes and it’s up to you how many rounds you play so it’s really flexible in terms of time. Every time I have played, games have gone on for 2-3 hours of laughing and joking!
If you need a simple party game then definitely look at codenamed. Honestly, I’ve never bought a game that has been enjoyed by so many people!
I have bought and played a few party games with friends over the years, both physical card and board games as well as digital ones like the Jackbox games. This game however was the first game that every single person in the room loved and wanted to play more.
It’s such a simple premise, but the enormous selection of words and layouts for the board mean that the game has effectively infinite re-playability, and it’s a laugh every time.
The spy masters are guaranteed to get frustrated at their team for not understanding their links between words, gurning their faces to try and avoid giving any clues away.
Can you create a link between the words ‘Whale’ and ‘Fire’? If you can then this is 100% the game for you. (Even if you can’t, you’ll have a laugh trying anyway!)
Concept: A word game in which there are 2 teams and 25 words on a board. 8/9 of them belong to each team (9 for the team that go first). Each team has one ‘spymaster’ who knows the identity of the all the words and using 1 word clues has to get his team to guess which words belong to that team.
Players: 4+, but works well with bigger groups – I played with 8.
Learning curve: Very fast – I would say that for anyone over the age of 11 they should be able to fully understand the game within the first play.
Game time: Each game lasts about 15 minutes, maybe less when you get better, but you find that you will play back to back games changing who is the spymaster
Excitement – The game is pretty exciting and given the short gametime teams who are losing at the start are rarely in a position in which they have 0% chance of winning (unlike games like monopoly where the winner is determined long before the end of the game)
Overall would recommend this game and if I lost this game I would buy it again.
I have Codenames Pictures as well, but don’t find that as enjoyable – I think there is a lot more scope for creativity in connecting words rather than pictures.
Duet in particular is very well designed. Each player has some information about the board – a number of agents, a number of bystanders, and assassins. There is some overlap – some of the agents are known to both players, but you don’t know which ones these are. You take it in turns to give clues – there is also an optional houserule that you don’t have to strictly take turns, e.g. if the first player has two clues ready in a row and the second doesn’t, they can do that.
Aside from this, it’s also nice that you get a whole new set of words that you can use with this game or with the original Codenames.
However, It relies heavily on trust and honest game-playing. Essentially one person on a team sets a puzzle and then watches the rest of their team heinously misinterpret their puzzle and get everything wrong. Naturally the puzzle-setter finds it very, very difficult to watch this happening without screaming in frustration, let alone some crafty eyebrow-wiggles or shakes of the head. If your players might be tempted to do this (or to throw a tantrum if they see the opposition team doing this) then try some variation on asking the puzzle-setters to leave the room during negotiations. Our favoured tactic (because a lot of the fun comes from the setter of puzzles watching the puzzled get mangled) is to make the person wear big sunglasses and cover their face like a shady spy.
Enjoy!
I actually own a similar independently created card game called “Trix” which has a similar concept of linking words.
The basic idea is that 25 cards are laid out (out of quite a large selection of double sided cards) each with a noun on it. A team consists of one person who is trying to convey a message/hint to their team members. They can provide a one word clue and indicate how many of the 25 cards they feel relate to that one word. Only 6 or 7 of the words actually are wanted by each team, the rest are either the opposing teams’ cards or are innocent bystander cards. One word card is an assassin and loses the game instantly for any team that picks it.
I won’t give you the entire rules now, they are available online anyway if you want them. This game is clever in the way it takes a simple game that takes minutes to learn and is basically a form of charades with more intelligence and direction, and themes it nicely into a spy game.
When I first got it, I couldn’t wait to give it a go, so I immediately tried a 2 player game (not recommended particularly) and this was just OK and I could see why although it’s just about playable, it’s not a good idea.
I then tried it as a four player game and it was already much much more enjoyable, we played it 6 times in a row (each game usually lasts about 20 minutes or so)
We haven’t tried it yet with more players, but it is immediately obvious why adding more players would make it very interesting and add an element of argument/discussion within teams that could be entertaining as each team member may have a different opinion of how a word relates to another (does Star relate to “Flag” more or less than it relates to “Fish” or “Night” for example)
All in all, this game deserves its good reputation. It’s not a sit around for hours board games with loads of complicated rules that you only understand after finishing the game. It’s a quick and easy, get up and running fast and enjoyable family / party game.
And maybe it’s that simplicity that makes it so jaw-droppingly brilliant if you ask me. You could argue that you could easily play this with just a pen and paper (maybe a dictionary if you have trouble thinking up lots of random words), so the designers have given you some nicely-themed components to make things as smooth as possible.
If this were priced any higher I’d drop it down to 3 stars but for what it is and the amount of fun you end up having, flawless. Plenty of scope for adding in (or removing) rules to make the game shorter, easier, difficult, more of a drinking game etc. We like to pick a codename card each and if that word is mentioned at any point you have to perform a forfeit, take a drink etc.