Codenames!

Welcome back to my blog! If this is your first time here I’m Lani and this blog is dedicated to reviewing games! Today I will be talking about one of my favorite games, Codenames. I think that this is a great game to play with a small group of friends. Codenames requires critical thinking and decision making skills. I will be explaining what Codenames is and how to play it. Enjoy!

Codenames is a 2015 card game designed by Vlaada Chvátil and published by Czech Games Edition. Two teams compete by each having a "spymaster" give one-word clues that can point to multiple words on the board. It is recommended for 4 people to play but more can play if split up into teams. The playing time is around 15-20 minutes but once you start playing you won't want to stop. The goal of the game is to give a clue to your partner so they can successfully guess a word. Codenames can help teach language skills and concept identifying.

To start the game, players are split into two equal teams. One player from each team is selected to be the spymaster. The two spymasters sit next to each other and across from their teammates. Included in the game are codename cards, 8 red agent cards, 8 blue agent cards, 7 innocent bystander cards, and 1 assassin card. 25 codename cards are chosen and are arranged in a 5 by 5 grid, each card contains a random word. Each team is assigned a color, either red or blue, then the spymasters receive the corresponding color agent cards.

Next a key card is drawn by the spymasters. They spymasters are the only ones who can see the key card. Here is an image of an example key card and codename card grid.

The key corresponds to the grid created by the 25 codename cards. For example the top left blue box would correspond with the top left codename card. This means that the word pan matches with the color blue. So the spymaster who was assigned the color blue, tries to say one word for their teammate to guess the word pan. A few example words could be Peter as in peter pan, or pot as in pots and pans. If they guess correctly they place a blue agent card over top the word pan, claiming it. Spymasters can also try and connect multiple codename cards with one word. For example if the red spymaster was trying to get their team to guess both wind and stone, they could say nature. Unfortunately if the spymasters teammates accidentally guess the stream, then the blue team claims the word with their own agent card.

The tan boxes on the key card are witness spots. If anyone guesses words in these spots, then the innocent bystander cards are placed on top of them. When a team guesses one of these cards, they lose a turn. The black box is the assassin. If a team guesses this word, they immediately lose the game. The first team to guess all their words correctly wins the game!

I would rate this game a 10/10. This is one of my favorite games and I love everything about it. I will say it can be annoying to play when your team will not guess the word you want them to, but other than that I would highly recommend purchasing this game. You can purchase the game here! Thanks for reading!