Pyramid Pick
Squint
Published by Out of the Box Publishing, Inc.
Designed by Deborah Boss
Game play by Mark Osterhaus, Ellen Osterhaus, Max Osterhaus
Illustration and Graphic Design by John Kovalic
$19.95
Some games, once they come out, seem so obvious you wonder why someone didn't think of them before. In the case of Squint, from Out of the Box Games, someone sort of did; the game was called Pictionary, and it required you to use whatever (usually minimal) artistic skills you had to sketch the clues your teammates needed to guess the right answers.
But you don't draw in this game. There's no pad, pens, or pencils, and you won't hear anyone lamenting, "But I don't know how to draw!" (You'll have to come up with a new excuse.) You still have cards to tell you what you must convey to the other players, but the mechanic is more unusual.
When a player takes his turn, he draws one of the 168 Squint cards. Each card has three items, numbered 1 to 3. The 1 items are fairly straightforward -- beard, hand, car, cat, eye -- and are worth fewer points. 3s are worth more, but are tougher to do: pickle, coffin, adhesive bandage. 2s fall somewhere in the middle. A specialized 6-sided die randomly determines which of the items the player must represent (1s are more likely with the die than 3s). The object of the game is to score points by getting others to guess what is being depicted, but rather than drawing from scratch, the chosen player has to draw the images using tiles from a pool of 72 shape cards . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: September 13, 2002
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