Palm Court | Wavelength: A Telepathic | Party Game | Ages 14+ | 2-12 players | 30 to 45 Minutes Playing Time

Product Information

First there's this big contraption. It's a plastic wheel on a post that you sit upright in the bottom of the box. Take a look at one of the pictures because it's a dandy. You give the wheel a spin or two and then open this little viewing slot. You see, the face of the wheel is purposely obscured, hiding the location of a scoring wedge that the guessers are not allowed to view. Don’t Use Words from the Wavelength Card: Your clue cannot use any words printed on the wavelength card or in the same family of words. As I said earlier, one of your team members is a psychic and knows the position of the target. However, he can only communicate the idea using concepts. He draws two cards with opposing concepts. This is what he uses to give clues. typeof focus_pdata.price_list[idx+1] == 'undefined')?('≥ '+price_row.min_quantity):((price_row.min_quantity < (focus_pdata.price_list[idx+1].min_quantity - 1))?(price_row.min_quantity+' - '+(focus_pdata.price_list[idx+1].min_quantity - 1)):price_row.min_quantity)}} Remain on Topic: Your clue should relate to the concepts printed on the wavelength card. You can’t use one of the words on the wavelength card for its double meaning. For example you can’t create a clue where “hot” is utilized as attractive instead of a high temperature on the hot-cold wavelength card.

The king in this space of skill-based guessing games is Decrypto. It’s another team game where you give word-based clues. But the twist here is that both teams use those clues to try and decode what code-words the opposing team has. As such it’s a little more demanding, a little less light-hearted, but more rewarding overall.

Components: plastic device, 84 Wavelength cards, 42 Advanced cards, 2 head scoring tokens, 1 guess token, plastic tray, instructions If there is a tie, each team will play one more round. The team that scores the most points wins the game. The teams will keep playing additional rounds until one team has scored more points. Cooperative Game For example, if the card this round is HOT-COLD and the bullseye is closer to the "cold" side of the centre, the Psychic needs to give a clue somewhere in that region. Maybe "salad"?

Taking between 30 minutes and an hour to play, Wavelength does demand more mental investment than some party games, so it might not be best for a drunken night out (though it certainly works well for a slightly sloshed evening). On the other hand, that does give it some appeal to people who like a bit of strategy in their games, despite its cast iron party credentials. That’s why Wavelength might be one of the best party games we’ve played. True story, we kept right on playing even after one of our teams was victorious.The Psychic then grabs the wheel on the device and turns it for a while to make sure it is in a random position. This randomizes the location of the target that you are trying to get your teammates to guess. The Psychic will now turn the outside wheel to randomly select the target area for the round. There’s an animated eccentricity to this game that is electric. The same pool of title cards is used over three rounds, with each subsequent phase getting more difficult. Initially, you can offer any clues except words that are in the title itself. The second round you can only provide a single word. And in the final sequence of play, you may only pantomime. The Psychic should do all of this secretly, so players on both teams can't see where the target is.

You will then open the screen so you can see the target on the device. The target features five different wedges. The points printed on each wedge tells you how many points that you will score if your teammates choose that section of the spectrum. In front of each team is a group of cards laid out in a grid. These have common words on them such as “hose” and “winter.” A leader from each team is secretly given a unique randomized grouping of these words, and they must get their team to guess all of their cards before their opponents guess theirs. The idea is to give one-word clues that link multiple cards together — such as “stark” to get your team to guess “winter” and “bare.” The slyest of clues links three or even four cards. Of course, you can customise all this if you want. Play to more than 10! Do more than seven cards! Don't score at all! It doesn't break anything. Oh, and we mentioned that it takes 30 seconds to set up. The dial is one single piece that you just slot in and out of the the box's plastic base to hold it upright. Then you draw a card. That's the entirety of setting it up. Scores the number of points printed on the wedge that the dial is in. Below, the team scores 3 points. Other TeamCodenames is a layup on a list like this. This is a word game from hobbyist designer Vlaada Chvátil that found mainstream success and spawned several spinoffs, such as Codenames: Pictures , Codenames: Disney Family Edition, and Codenames: Duet. It attained widespread appeal due to its simple ruleset, familiar team-based format, and penchant for making participants feel clever. Chose which team will start the game. The team that goes first keeps their head token in the zero slot. The other team moves their head token to the one point space.