Designed by: Uncredited
The Emoji Game is a card game themed around – you guessed – emojis, where your goal is to collect five of the same set.
Players are dealt a hand of five emoji cards, and one is flipped face-up next to the draw pile. Flip the top card from second deck of action cards.
On your turn, you play action card first – this might involve stealing or swapping cards with other players, doing some kind of head-to-head battle or all-play silliness that you hope will work out in your favour. Having played an action card, you now draw an emoji card into your hand – from the deck or the top of the face-up discard pile – and then discard an emoji card of your choice. As soon as one player gets five of a kind – and you can use the All Mixed Up yellow emojis as wilds – they declare a win.
High, and fairly arbitrary
Low
Low
Younger kids may love repeat visits for the simplicity, brevity, and silliness. Adults may tire of it quickly.
3-6
Players
6+
Years
5-15
Mins
Sam says
Engineered to be fast, fun and silly, and as such, succeeds on its own terms. But this wore out its welcome quickly, even for the kids. There are games that do silliness in a way that feels more re-visitable, less forced, and less like the game is playing you. There are almost no decisions for the players here; none of the luck-pushing of Pickonimo, the bluff of Cockroach Poker or the tantalising what's-next of roll-write-games like Avenue. In contrast this feels like it was designed with an eye on the market, rather than an eye on the table.