LogFAQs > #898918543

Enjoyment - It's essentially been Codenames and Avalon for me in terms of high-player-count party games, and I've been all-in on Codenames since it was released. It might have been the first game I got hyped for, and I was super-excited when my friend got it shortly after Gen Con 2015 when it was (incredible as it is to believe now) hard to find. One of my favorite parts of Codenames is the relationship-building and learning about people you get when they try to link clues or guess what you were thinking. The sinking realization of "Ohhh crap" is fantastic.

I've played every variant of Codenames except Marvel and Disney (because fuck that noise). I've played at pretty much every player count with variants of guessers-guess-for-both, same-guesser-for-both, one-team "cooperative" mode where we race against an "AI" that gets 1 or 2 (depending on a coin flip - we'd store a quarter in the game box). We've had rowdy, massive trash-talk sessions, a surprising number of people being shocked by the more PG-13 words in Deep Undercover, minds being bent at the Pictures variant, and stewing mind-bending from 2 to 4 in Duet.

There's a bunch of stuff surrounding Codenames, so I'll just give my opinions on each of them, real quick.

Playing with a timer is near-essential in my opinion. You can download a fantastic app for Codenames that has variable turn lengths and gives specific extra time to the clue-givers on the first round. A timer can add some tension, but paradoxically, it can make the game less punishing. Being a spymaster in Codenames can be brutal for the anxious - you're expected to maintain a poker face and stew in silence as your team picks wrong answer after wrong answer and then has the audacity to trash you for it - you can't even fight back! But it's even worse if you feel like you have no room for error, and when you use a timer, no one expects you to be perfect. A timer also lets you play more games in a quicker amount of time - always a good thing.

The primary "word variants" of Codenames are Pictures and Deep Undercover. For my money, the base Codenames is by far the best. The pictures themselves are fantasticly designed and clever in a tri-tone, minimalistic way, but the clues that link them tend to be annoyingly straightforward ("round" will very often be a phenomenal, game-winning clue in Pictures, which... isn't that satisfying). Deep Undercover has a bit of shock value and can make you laugh in that Cards Against Humanity way, but drawing connections between a bunch of phallic euphemisms can wear out in novelty pretty quickly - it's a reasonable change of pace.

Duet is a different story. As someone who loves guessing and being a spymaster, Duet lets everyone by a spymaster and a guesser at all times. It's like twice the game! I also love cooperative games, and it's the perfect game at two to four players. The only downside is that the word selection in Duet is a little weaker, but there's nothing stopping you from applying Duet rules to a different set of cards. Duet has been around for a lot less time than Codenames, but it's become perhaps my favorite cooperative experience in board gaming in that time, and it's what pushed the Codenames family over the top here.

Future - I'm a bit Codenames'd out - I want to play a few games and let everyone be a spymaster once or so, but I no longer want it to be the centerpiece of a game night, with ten games a night (and I loved doing that before). It's still a great party game and especially a really good closer. That said, I've gotten far fewer reps of Duet and right now, I could play that until the cows come home - with the right people.

Bonus question - What is your favorite Codenames memory? What is your most versatile game?

Hint for #1 - A mass market game whose variants have gone by different monikers in the past
---

yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness