Co-operative Play

Codenames Duet keeps the basic elements of Codenames — give one-word clues to try to get someone to identify your agents among those on the table — but now you're working together as a team to find all of your agents. (Why you don't already know who your agents are is a question that Congressional investigators will get on your back about later!)

To set up play, lay out 25 word cards in a 5×5 grid. Place a key card in the holder so that each player sees one side of the card. Each player sees a 5×5 grid on the card, with nine of the squares colored green (representing your agents) and one square colored black (representing an assassin). The assassin is in different places on each side of the card, and three of the nine squares on each side are also green on the other side!

Collectively, you need to reveal all fifteen agents — without revealing either assassin or too many innocent bystanders — before time runs out in order to win the game. Either player can decide to give a one-word clue to the other player, along with a number. Whoever receives the clue places a finger on a card to identify that agent. If correct, they can attempt to identify another one. If they identify a bystander, then their guessing time ends. If they identify an assassin, you both lose! Unlike regular Codnenames, they can keep guessing as long as they keep identifying an agent each time; this is useful for going back to previous clues and finding ones they missed earlier.

In Goths Save The Queen, two two-player clans fight to save the Queen hidden in the middle of the table. Each clan is composed of one player giving orders (the King) and another one trying to understand which order has been given (the Warchief).

To give an order, the King chooses a card and flips it onto the table to reveal two orders on its back, with no clue as to which is the right one. The Warchief checks the battlefield, then tries to choose the right order with a card in hand. When both clans have chosen their cards, all of them are revealed, and if both cards match on a clan, then the order is carried out. Some examples of orders: loading the catapult, firing with the catapult, progressing toward the Queen, looking at hidden cards in the middle to find the Queen, and avoiding traps...

Of course, within a clan it is absolutely prohibited to make any sign or say anything to help the partner to guess which order is intended.

When playing 1-vs-1 or 1-vs-2, the game is a bit different: The single player team cannot play the same order twice, one turn after another.

With multiple copies of Goths Save The Queen, you can compete in a 3-vs-3, 3-vs-4 or 4-vs-4 format.

Description from the publisher:

After being stripped of all their possessions, a mage, a warrior, an elf, and a dwarf are forced to go rob the local Magic Maze shopping mall for all the equipment necessary for their next adventure. They agree to map out the labyrinth in its entirety first, then find each individual’s favorite store, and then locate the exit. In order to evade the surveillance of the guards who eyed their arrival suspiciously, all four will pull off their heists simultaneously, then dash to the exit. That's the plan anyway…but can they pull it off?

Magic Maze is a real-time, cooperative game. Each player can control any hero in order to make that hero perform a very specific action, to which the other players do not have access: Move north, explore a new area, ride an escalator… All this requires rigorous cooperation between the players in order to succeed at moving the heroes prudently. However, you are allowed to communicate only for short periods during the game; the rest of the time, you must play without giving any visual or audio cues to each other. If all of the heroes succeed in leaving the shopping mall in the limited time allotted for the game, each having stolen a very specific item, then everyone wins together.

At the start of the game, you have only three minutes in which to take actions. Hourglass spaces you encounter along the way give you more time. If the sand timer ever completely runs out, all players lose the game: Your loitering has aroused suspicion, and the mall security guards nab you!

Description from the publisher:

"Based on the classic computer game"

According to the box:

"You may:
1. Travel the trail
2. Work together to overcome calamities
3. Get at least one member of your party to Oregon
4. Stop and rest
5. Decide which of your friends will die of dysentery
6. Write your name on a tombstone
What is your choice?"

All sorts of gruesome deaths await you and the rest of your wagon party in this official multi-player card game version of the classic computer game. To win you’ll need to keep one player alive all the way from Independence, MO to the Willamette Valley. But between rattlesnakes, starvation, dead oxen, broken bones, dysentery, and a host of other calamities the odds are long . . . almost as long as the Oregon Trail itself.

Players work together to move along the trail, fording rivers and playing Supply Cards to overcome calamities. But be warned–there will be times when it makes sense to let one of your wagon mates succumb to a calamity rather than expend precious supplies. And every time players go the way of all flesh, you’ll flip over the roster card and write their names on tombstones (don’t forget to include a quick epitaph). It’s a great way to relive your fond memories of one of the world’s most beloved computer games, and to kill off your family and friends at the same time.

The Elite is a twenty-card mini adventure for Unlock!, the card-driven escape room game from Space Cowboys! At the beginning of the adventure, you and your friends find yourself locked in a hotel room with a mystery. You’ll need all of your wits and your logic if you’re going to escape before time runs out.

The Elite can either be accessed via print and play files on the Unlock! website (you can link to this page in the weblinks section), or via a produced version.

It also requires a free companion app to play. The link to this app can also be found in the weblinks section.