Focus
Designed by: Antonin Boccara,Romaric Galonnier
Focus is a two-player game of visual deduction, where you win or lose together.
In the box are deck of Picture cards, and each game involves laying sixteen of them out in a 4×4 grid, plus four more next the grid, but not a part of it. Each player then gets a grid card which determines which of these pictures is ‘yours’ by identifying a position in the grid, eg second row, third from left. Both players’ job is to clue which picture they have to their partner, but doing so means using the other pictures in the grid as clues!
Let’s say my picture is a pair spectacles. I might pick out the mirror (glass) the moustache (face adornment) or the walking stick (vague shape resemblance!). The catch here is that we lose if we pick out the picture our team-mate is trying to clue to us, so this is where the four additional cards can be very helpful: in establishing some vague conceptual possibilities quickly, and hopefully eliminating others. It can still happen, of course, but the game is so startling brief it’s easy to start over.
Otherwise players continue taking turns removing cards until both are satisfied – or at least hopeful – they know what their opponent is clueing to them, at which point you count down 3-2-1 and place your fingers on the pictures in question. If you get them both right – you win!
Sam says
Focus is a sort of distilled, in that it takes the deduction of something like Codenames and pares it right back into a much briefer playtime – but for two. I’m not 100% convinced that it holds up to repeat play because after a while I suspect I, at least, will feel like even though the deductive challenge is always new thanks to the variable set-up of cards, the experience of it starts to feel formulaic. But it’s certainly fun enough for a few visits, and you may make happy memories making them.
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Take That!
None
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Fidget Factor!
Extremely low
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Brain Burn!
It's a question of looking for visual links, making those cognitive connections and hoping your partner sees the same ones you do
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Again Again!
It's light, it's brief, it's accessible, it has enough randomness cards that the challenge will always be there. But each play is very similar to the last, so to wring the most out of Focus you need to love that co-op puzzle it offers.
