Title: Hues and Cues
Designed By: Scott Brady
Published By: The Op.
Released: 2020
Player Count: 3-10
Time to Play: 30 Minutes
Ages: 8+
When I was younger one of my favorite things to do was to go to the local hardware store and pick out paint strips. There was just something so cheerful about seeing all the colors you could ever imagine. I would grab a few and go home and pretend I was planning color schemes for an interior design project. I loved reading all of the paint names and looking at the differences in hues between colors. Well, the good news is that I have found a game that thoroughly satisfies my inner child. Introducing Hues and Cues from The Op!
In Hues and Cues, players will work to describe colors in an attempt to get opponents to guess the color they are hinting about. The better your clues are, the more points you will score. The better you guess, the more points you get for that too!
Setup:
As with many other party games from the OP, Hues and Cues is remarkably simple to set up and to learn to play. It is one of our favorite traits about their games.
To get started, put the game board in between all players. Have each player select a color and take the three player tokens that match. Place one player token for each player at the top of the board near the score tracker.
Shuffle the cards and make a draw pile.
Set the scoring frame off to the side and you are ready to play.
How to determine the first player:
The person wearing the most colorful outfit will be the clue giver for the first round.
How to Play:
The goal of Hues and Cues is to guess the color the cue giver is providing clues for.
At the start of the cue giver's turn, they will draw a card from the deck (making sure to not show other players the card they picked) and choose one of the four colors shown on the card. Each color will have coordinates on it that match a location on the game board.
The cue giver then gives a single one-word clue to describe their chosen color. There are a few rules as to what you cannot say:
Cannot use generic color names, like red or blue. But you can use more abstract names like merlot or periwinkle.
Cannot reference the letter or number of the coordinates
Cannot reference general location on the game board
Cannot refer to any object in the room
Cannot repeat a clue given earlier in the game
Anything else works, as long as it is just one word.
Players then take their first guess. Going in clockwise order, starting with the player on the left of the cue giver, players place one of their player tokens on an unoccupied space on the board that they think the cue giver is describing. If another player already guessed the location you wanted, you will have to pick a different space as only one player token can occupy any space.
After all players have taken their first guess, the cue giver now gets to give a two-word cue. The cue must follow the same rules as the one-word cue, but may be one or two words.
Players then take their second guesses, this time in counterclockwise order (or beginning with the person on the cue giver's right). It is optional if a player wishes to place a second piece or not.
Once the last person has placed their second player piece on the board, scoring begins. The cue giver takes the scoring frame and places it on the board so that the color they chose is right in the middle spot of the frame. Points are awarded based on how close all the guesses were.
The cue giver scores one point for every player piece that is within the frame (2 points in a 3 player game). All of the guesses score points based on how close they were. If they guessed the exact color they get 3 points. If they were within the frame, but not the exact match they get 2 points. And if they were adjacent to the outside of the frame they score 1 point, so it is possible for a guesser to score a maximum of 5 points.
In a 3-6 player game, play continues until each person has been the cue giver twice. In a game with 7 or more players, each person is the cue giver once. In the end, whoever has the most points wins!
Our Thoughts:
For starters, looking at the game board just makes us smile. It is so colorful and ascetically pleasing that you can't help but love it. We feel inspired to create art just by opening the box.
We love how easy it is to get started playing Hues and Cues. Even with 10 people, it only takes a minute or so to get going.
Regarding gameplay, we enjoyed how scoring is calculated. The way Hues and Cues is designed incentivizes the cue giver to provide good clues, and the guessers to actually aim to get it right. Scoring when you are both the cue giver and the guesser helps to keep player's engaged no matter what role they are in. It also helps to minimize downtime between turns. Players are not sitting around just waiting for their turn as they need to pay attention when the cue giver is going, and to where other players are placing their player tokens.
One thing that surprised us was that it is actually possible to guess the correct color. When we first opened the board, my mom who was playing with us at the time, was like "This is dumb. It is going to be impossible". She then proceeded to guess the exact right color on the first turn of the game. We found that for many of the rounds, players can get the right color or at least close to it.
We also appreciated how the game advanced through a turn. Giving a single-word clue makes initial guesses vaguer. Then when the two-word clue is provided players can assess the new information with the old clue they had and hopefully narrow down their final choice from there.
One unique thing we really enjoyed about Hues and Cues is the ability to play it virtually. While the world may be going back to some semblance of normal, there are still lots of friends who are not local that we love to play with. To play Hues and Cues remotely all you really need to do is have a game master (who has the game) set it up, and face a camera over the board. The game master can show the card to the cue giver while telling others not to look. Gameplay can pretty much continue as normal otherwise, with the expectation that the game master would need to place everyone's player tokens on the board for them. It's nice to have a game that we can play with a large group of friends or family virtually. Since it is easy to teach, even bringing in new gamers is simple. Gameplay can pretty much continue as normal otherwise, with the expectation that the game master would need to place everyone's player tokens on the board for them. It's nice to have a game that we can play with a large group of friends or family virtually. Since it is easy to teach, even bringing in new gamers is simple.
If you are looking for a truly family-friendly party game and you enjoy deducing the correct answer with limited information, or you just really like the Pantone Color Palette Hues and Cues is for you!
Pudgy Cat Games makes no profit off reviews. Should you wish to purchase Hues and Cues, you can help support us by purchasing the game through our Amazon Affiliate Link below. It will cost you nothing extra, but will help support our site! More information can be found on The Op's website.
Comments