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Introduction
Similo is a cooperative deduction card game where players will work together to try to guess a correct card out of a set of 12 that are laid out in front of them by using clues that have similarities or differences to the chosen card.
Game Set Up
To set up the game you will take the deck of cards and shuffle them, the clue giver then draws 12 at random and looks at the top card, this is the card that the other players will be trying to guess. They then shuffle the 12 cards and lay them face up in front of them in a 4x3 grid. The clue giver will then draw 5 more cards from the deck and this will be their hand.
Game Round
A round is played by the clue giver playing one of the cards in their hand either vertically or horizontally. If the card is played vertically, this means that the card the guessers are trying to find has something in common with this clue card. If it is played horizontally, then this means that it doesn't have something in common. Once this is done the clue giver draws a card to keep their hand total to 5, this is repeated each round.
The guessers will then talk amongst themselves and try to decide on which card to remove out of the 12 in front of them. In the first round, they will only need to flip over one card that they think isn't the chosen card, however in round 2 they will need to flip 2. This continues for each round, where the number of the round determines how many cards they will need to eliminate. The game will go on for 5 rounds. If you make it as far as the final round, the final clue will be given and there will be two cards to choose from, If you choose correctly everyone wins and you can shuffle all the cards back together and choose a new clue giver. However, at any point throughout the game, if you select the card the clue giver had seen at the start, you all lose.
Thoughts
What initially drew me to Similo was the theme, as I’m a massive Lord of the Rings fan, but underneath the theme, Similo was actually really fun. I didn’t know what to expect from a small, well-priced family game but I was pleasantly surprised. It’s probably one of my go-to games when I want to just sit down and have 10 minutes of fun with my friends, and not really have to think strategically about how I'm going to win. Now this can turn some people away as the game does sometimes come down to luck, depending on what clue cards you draw. Sometimes they really don’t help you, however, I didn’t mind this, because if I won with a bad hand it made the victory sweeter. This is the kind of game that you could teach someone new within minutes and in my opinion is a great gateway game for getting people into playing board games. It’s simple yet fun and has replayability. The player interaction can sometimes be a bit limited, as the clue giver can only interact with the clue cards they are playing and not give any hints, but the guessers will be interacting a lot to discuss what card they think they should discard. I’m also a really big fan of the artwork, it’s charming and I like how much effort and detail went into each character, for example each character’s background is specific for them, Frodo has his sword Sting, and the Eagles have moths, just like the one Gandalf used in the film to communicate with The great eagle “Gwaihir”. It’s small details like this that as a fan of Lord of the Rings really pleased me.
Now if you aren’t a fan, which deeply upsets me, there is good news! Similo comes in multiple themes, from Harry Potter, History, Myths, Spookies, Animals and Wild Animals to name a few. Out of these that I have played, I personally enjoyed Spookies and Wild Animals, the artwork is again charming and the characters are really fun. I would say to probably avoid History and Myths unless you have an interest in them, as you may not know who some of the characters are. In the instructions of Similo, it also says that you can mix multiple packs together and use both to give clues, I think this is an interesting concept and they probably did this so that you can buy multiple copies and use them at the same time, however, feel like the clues wouldn’t really work for certain situations. I had to get my team to guess Treebeard in Similo, but all I had were historical figures in my hand. Looking at my hand of historical characters trying to find similarities, tree? Nope, beard? Nope, branches…? And just like that, Treebeard was eliminated. I would say that if this game doesn't appeal to you, then games that are similar to Similo are Guess Who and Codenames.
Components
40 cards
1 Rulebook
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