Communication Limits

Trash Talk

In Trash Talk, you and your fellow raccoons are trying to communicate with one another through the medium that you know best: trash.

In the first round of play, three word cards are revealed, and each player (or team) secretly assigns the same three objects to these three words. These objects come from an assortment of odd items included in the box. Does the plastic plant best match the word "double", "dream", or "sharp"?

Once both sides have locked in their choices, reveal the objects. If you match all three objects, put those cards aside, add a fourth object, lay out new cards, and play another round; if not, try again with three new cards. If you fail again, you lose the game. If you successfully make your way up to matching ten objects with ten cards, you win!

Sky Team

Sky Team is a co-operative game, exclusively for two players, in which you play a pilot and co-pilot at the controls of an airliner. Your goal is to work together as a team to land your airplane in different airports around the world.

To land your plane, you need to silently assign your dice to the correct spaces in your cockpit to balance the axis of your plane, control its speed, deploy the flaps, extend the landing gear, contact the control tower to clear your path, and even have a little coffee to improve your concentration enough to change the value of your dice.

If the aircraft tilts too much and stalls, overshoots the airport, or collides with another aircraft, you lose the game...and your pilot's license...and probably your life.

From Montreal to Tokyo, each airport offers its own set of challenges. Watch out for the turbulence as this could end up being bumpy ride!

—description from the publisher

Sides

Every word counts, so focus and think carefully about your choices.

In the brain-teasing co-operative game Sides, you have to weigh your options and wisely choose your words.

The objective of the game is simple: Each round, help two detectives find a mystery word. To do so, the other players (the witnesses) give detectives a one-word clue that starts with the letter at either end of the letter-card line.

The detectives then jointly offer an answer, and if they found the solution, two other players become the detectives and a new word is uncovered; if not, the witness players suggest a new clue with a new letter card. The fewer the clues used and the more words guessed, the higher the score. Will you beat the world record?

13 Words

13 Words is a co-operative idea-association party game in which the team aims for the highest score possible.

To set up, lay out twelve double-sided word cards on the perimeter of the game board, then place a word card in the center of the board. This round's Captain wants to find the most obvious link between this central word and one of the outer words. The Captain indicates their choice on their answer wheel, and all other players try to guess the Captain's choice. Each player who guesses correctly wins a star, and the Captain collects a star as long as at least one player earned a star this round.

For the next round, the player to the Captain's left becomes the new Captain. They flip over the word card matching the previous Captain's choice, place it in the center of the game board, then everyone guesses how the new Captain will link this newly revealed word to one of the remaining words on the perimeter.

After eleven rounds, the game ends, and players tally their stars to determine the success level of the team. The best possible score is 11 times the number of players. How did you do?

Silencio

In Silencio, all players form a team together, a team that cannot speak to one another.

You each start with a hand of cards from four suits, and your goal as a team is to discard as many cards as possible — but each card played must have a higher value than the previously played card of the same suit. If a newly played card is the direct successor of the card last played of that color, then you orient the card to show its dark side and suffer the penalty from that card, with the green penalty, for example, forcing the next card played to be green while the blue penalty requires you to give another player one of the face-up cards available from the Oracle.

If a newly played card is not the direct successor of the card last played of that color, then you place the card with the light side face up, taking the bonus depicted on that half of the card if you desire, such as ignoring the next penalty or placing a card from your hand face up in front of you so that anyone could play it.

Five shrines are play — one multicolor shrine and one of each color — and before or after your card play for the turn, you can choose to flip a shrine face down to use the bonus of that color.

If you can't play or have no cards in hand, you must pass, and if all players pass in turn, then the game ends. Your score is based on the number of cards in all players' hands, with 0 being the best score possible. If you find the game difficult, you can include the tavern card that a few times each game allows a player to give limited information about their hand; if the game is too easy, you can remove some or all of the shrines to eliminate those "extra" bonuses.