Colorful

RRP: £19.99
Now £16.15(SAVE 19%)
RRP £19.99
Expected Restock Date 31/05/2024
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Colorful is a game about categorizing and matching colors as a group. Each round a player will come up with a specific example within a broad topic, for the group to secretly match with a color card from their hand. After 5 rounds, cards are checked to see if the group or an individual wins!
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Awards

Rating

  • Artwork
  • Complexity
  • Replayability
  • Player Interaction
  • Component Quality

You Might Like

  • Sleek and compact box design
  • A cooperative game that switches to competitive scoring if you don't all win
  • Everyone gets a turn regardless of player count
  • Easy to play without having to think too much

Might Not Like

  • No real art on the cards
  • Being put on the spot to think of a clue
  • Having to buy a second copy to play groups >6
  • Only a quick game, no deep strategies required
  • American English
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Description

Colorful is a game about categorizing and matching colors as a group. Each round a player will come up with a specific example within a broad topic, for the group to secretly match with a color card from their hand. After 5 rounds, cards are checked to see if the group or an individual wins!

As the game card turned over it gave me my category for the round. MAGICAL. I briefly scanned my hand before announcing ‘Unicorn’, as I laid my purple card face-down. Josh then took the final turn, announcing ‘Rain’. I had several cards in my hand that would work for this, Sky Blue, Grey or Blue. Unsure on the choice I looked at his category. SONG. Everyone else eagerly played their cards with a confident look, it was just me hesitating. As I scanned my hand a second time I noticed the card I had overlooked last round, Pink. Suddenly, I realized the mistake I had made with my previous choice, the tune of Purple Rain softly playing in the back of my mind….

All The Colours

Colorful comes in a fairly small sized box, only needing two stacks of cards and the instructions to get you going to play. That gives it a good sturdy structure, and the depth of the box holds the lid on fairly well, meaning I can drop this into my bag on a games night without having to worry about losing all the cards to the bottom. The cards feel of a nice quality, which is good seeing as they are the only components. The art for the cards and box is simple and minimalist, the gold foil title making it easy to pick out from the shelf. Perhaps my one slight annoyance is that the game doesn’t use the UK spelling and I have incorrectly typed it into search engines trying to find it several times.

Overview

Up to 6 people can play Colorful. Everyone gets their own set of identical colour cards, each with a unique card back to identify their own set. All the other cards will form a deck in the middle. These cards each contain 4 categories that relate to a certain topic, the active player will be using one of the categories to give a clue related to a colour card in their hand that is played face-down on the table, everyone else trying to match the card. Over 5 rounds the goal of the game is for the players to cooperate and match every single colour successfully, but if that fails then the players all compete competitively to see who as matched the most majorities to win.

I Can See A Rainbow

On explaining the rules the game sounds simple, but after starting to play you’ll find out it has some more complications than it first seems. For starters, players won’t get to choose which category they want to use, the categories on the cards are sorted by number, so the round you are in dictates the category you get. The cards are set up so the categories tend to be slightly broader and easier in the first round, and not so much later on. A good example is the food topic card, starting off nicely with the category of ‘food’ giving plenty of options, the last round category is flavour, which is slightly harder to put a word to a colour. Another aspect of the game to consider is your own individual hand of cards. Every round starts with the same set of cards, but only 10 of 15, which are chosen at random before you begin. Every card played stays face down until the game ends, so you won’t know what mistakes have been made, and how a very easy and obvious choice to you might not be the same to everyone else, and by the time the final round rolls around the player choosing the clue only has 6 cards remaining to pick from, and most likely they’re the leftovers that no one could think of a sufficient clue for.

Variants

The game comes with enough category cards to play several times without seeing any repeats, and each time you can have a different selection of cards to use. But if you fancy changing it up there are a few included variants to change the difficulty, bringing a different game experience.

Teams – Before the game begins arrange yourselves into teams of minimum 2 each, at the game end your team only gets a point for a round if every member was part of the majority scoring that round.

Base Category – Each round, when revealing the category, use the clue as written on the card, there is no need to come up with a word. This adds a much harder level of difficulty for the game, not being able to narrow down your clues, but it does remove the need for thinking of words and those terrible panic clues that can appear.

Double Colours – Everyone keeps all 15 cards during set up. Now whenever you give a word clue you place two colours down, not just one, and everyone has to match the exact two colours with their cards. You’ll probably find a few rounds where every player plays a completely different pair of cards.

7-12 Players – With two copies of the game you can turn it into a large group game, you’ll play a number of rounds equal to the number of players so everyone gets a turn.

Final Thoughts

Colorful is a fun game that will tend to get a few laughs as the game goes on, usually mid round as someone realises exactly when they messed up before. Good for breaking out as a quick filler, and it can fit in larger groups, providing that you have two copies of the box. If you’ve played any pick a word game then you’ll find a few similarities here, and some people may find that outstays its welcome, especially those who tend to move away from playing word or party games and look for something a bit more substantial. But from experience I’ve always enjoyed my plays and have found the included variants have really mixed it up to give plenty of options to replay with some different experiences.

In this abstract game, Colorful, players are cooperating to match all the same colours every round. Each round has a different category for the active player to choose a colour and clue, but nothing gets revealed until the end, so you may find yourself giving the perfect clue for a colour in your hand, only to hear the groans around the table as you realise someone played the wrong card at some point.

Set Up

Colorful comes with two sets of cards. Firstly the Category cards, which are shuffled and placed in a stack in the middle of the players. Secondly the colour cards, these come in 6 sets of 15 cards with each set having the same 15 colours and a unique back, each player takes a set of these cards.

Once every player has their cards, choose one set to shuffle and remove 5 of the colour cards from. Every other player removes the same five colours and everyone should have the same hand of ten remaining.

How To Play

Colorful is player over 5 rounds, unless you are playing with 6 players then the game will last for 6 rounds. The youngest player will be the first player.
On a player’s turn they will take and reveal the top card from the Category deck. Each card has several categories grouped around a common theme, these are numbered in order of the round they will be used on, e.g in the first round category 1) on the card will be used, whilst in rounds 4 or 5 (or 6) category 4-5) will be used.

Once a player has revealed their category card, they will first come up with a subject based on the category for that round, before laying a colour facedown next to the category card, all the other players will then also lay a colour facedown, with the goal for all the players to match the same colour. The only rule given is that the subject chosen cannot have a colour in it, players can opt to add any further rules as they wish to constraint the game. Once all the players have placed a colour card facedown then play proceeds to the next player clockwise, the cards are not revealed. The next player draws the next category card and lays it next to the first category card, once the next subject has been said all players then lay their colour cards facdown again next to the category card,and in line with their own already played cards. Play continues like so until all the rounds have been played.

After the final round has finshed you can now reveal the colours that were played each round, one at a time. If all players have played the same colour for every round then you have all won the co-op game, congradulations! However, if you have not all matched, then the game moves to a points system to determine any winner(s). Each round any players who have played the majority colour will earn a point, even if it doesn’t match the colour played by the subject giver, if there is a tie for majorities than nobody earns any points that round. The player(s) with the most points will be declared the winner(s).

Variants

If that isn’t enough for you, there are several game modes that can be played to change things up, with how short the game plays out you can probably fit in a few of these in quick succession.

  • Teams – Players will be split into teams with a minimum of 2 players in each. Play proceeds as normal, but at the end all the teams are directly competing so it goes straight to points scoring. In order to score a point each round all members of a team must have played matching colours. The highest scoring team(s) win.
  • Base Categories – Each round there is no active player choosing a subject, instead the subject for the round is simply whatever the category card lists for that round.
  • Double Colours – During set-up all players keep all 15 colour cards. Each round after the active player chooses a subject they must play 2 colour cards. Players must match both colours each round in order to be correct, or in order to score a point if cooperative success fails.
  • Up to 12 – If you mix together 2 Colorful game boxes the game may be played with up to 12 players. In this case you will play a number of rounds equal to the number of players, so every player will have a chance to choose a subject.

Wording It Up

Now you know how to play Colorful, you might find yourself getting in so many games that some of the category cards come up a few times. In this case why not just open up another word game box, such as Codenames or Just One, and take random cards from there for choosing subjects, or even just choose your own categories, whatever works for you. You know how to play it, so play it your way!

Zatu Score

Rating

  • Artwork
  • Complexity
  • Replayability
  • Player Interaction
  • Component Quality

You might like

  • Sleek and compact box design
  • A cooperative game that switches to competitive scoring if you don't all win
  • Everyone gets a turn regardless of player count
  • Easy to play without having to think too much

Might not like

  • No real art on the cards
  • Being put on the spot to think of a clue
  • Having to buy a second copy to play groups >6
  • Only a quick game, no deep strategies required
  • American English