Designed by: Bruno Sautter,Ludovic Roudy
Just One is a ludicrously simple party game where everyone works together.
Each player has a wipe-able nameplate and a pen. There is a deck of cards with five words on each. At the start of the game 13 cards are dealt to the table and the rest put back in the box. One player (the Guesser) places a card facing away from them – so they cannot see the words – and chooses a number. Each player now writes a clue for the corresponding word on the card (for example, the word Elephant might throw up the clues animal, big, grey, snort, trunk) and the clue-givers compare clues before revealing them to the guesser – if two or more players have written the same clue, they cannot be revealed! So if in our imaginary scenario above two people had written animal and two had written trunk, the Guesser only gets to see the words big, grey and snort. Suddenly it’s not so easy!
All the non-duplicate clues are revealed to the guesser and they hopefully guess the word! If they get it right, the card is kept for a point. If they get it wrong, the card is discarded along with another from the pile on the table (the Guesser can choose to pass and lose just one card instead of two). A new guesser steps up and a new round begins.
After all 13 cards are used up, the game is over! The players goal is to get as many cards guessed as possible, so thirteen is a perfect score.
An interesting cooperative take on party word games - a game you could play after dinner without having to clear away first, which is a criteria that appeals to me as it allows me to spring a game on unsuspecting dinner guests.
None!
None!
You only need to think of one clue - unless you're the guesser, of course - but with more players the possibility of duplicates gets higher and higher, and as a result the clues can get more and more misleading as people avoid the 'obvious' for fear of cancelling each other out.
If you played it enough we suppose you could probably get familiar with the words on all the cards. But that would take you quite a long time, and even knowing them wouldn't guarantee success - it's all about the clueing.
3-7
Players
8+
Years
15-30
Mins
Sam says
Brilliantly accessible and a great leveller for kids and adults. The catch of duplicate clues cancelling each other out is what makes the game - forcing the clue-givers (especially with more players, when the game is at its best) to think a bit harder and hope not to choose what someone else has written. Or take a risk and hope that everyone else is avoiding the blatantly obvious clue, so you might get away with writing it. Great fun.