Players: 3-5
Playing Time: 15-30 minutes
Difficulty: 1 (of 10)

The Components

Knock! Knock! comes with a deck of 55 cards. Each is printed on medium-light cardstock.

The cards feature pictures of various "Halloween party guests". There's 15 monsters (including bouncers, rockers, and vamps), 15 ghosts, and 15 vampires, which together form the main set of guests. There are also 5 nerds, 3 grim reapers, and 2 headless horsemen.

The roles of the various guests are solely marked with pictures and icons. There's nothing that indicates any card's special powers. This is a definite minus for the game's usability. It discouraged me from playing the game for quite a while, but wasn't too bad when I actually played it. Still, cards that actually showed what they did would be better.

The artwork is all by Jacob Elijah Walker. It's all good-quality art that's colorful and slightly cartoony.

On the whole the components are of average quality, with good art, but poor utility. As such they earn an average "3" out of "5" for Style.

The Gameplay

The object of Knock! Knock! is to host the best Halloween party.

Setup: Deal each player a set of five cards. Then, flip the draw pile face-up. (This rule is unfortunately missing from the English version of the rules.)

The Cards. There are three main categories of cards: monsters, ghosts, and vampires. Each category of guests includes 7 normal guests, 2 bouncers, 1 rocker, and 5 vamps. There are also headless horsemen, who are unaffilliated (but very cool) guests, and nerds and grim reapers, who steal guests away from parties.

Knocking at Doors: On your turn you take a card from your hand and place it face-down in front of another player, saying, "Knock! Knock!" The other player then decides whether to open the door or not. If he opens the door he gets the guest (or takes the consequences). Otherwise you get the guest (or take the consequences).

Good Guests. Most guests you're happy to have at your party (and thus are glad you let in the door). These include normal guests, bouncers, rockers, and the special headless horsemen. They'll all be worth points at the end.

Other guests aren't as god, however.

Vamps. If a vamp joins your party, she steals away one of your guests of the same type. This guest goes to the other player involved in the interaction (meaning that if you open the door, the active player gets one of your guests, while if you don't you get one of theirs). Then the vamp is discarded.

Nerds. These annoying party-goers scare away an entire class of guests. The person who's party a nerd attends loses all of the guests of the type that they have the most of, and which isn't guarded by a bouncer of the same type, to the other player. Then the nerd is discarded.

Grim Reapers. Grim Reapers act similarly to nerds, but the party-goers are instead all discarded(!).

Ending the Game: You play through the deck of Knock! Knock! cards, then each player plays out his hand. Afterward you score.

Each guest, bouncer, and rocker of a type is worth 1 point, times 2 total if you have a rocker in that type. In addition each headless horseman is worth 3 points.

Whoever has the most points wins.

Relationships to Other Games

Knock! Knock! is an entirely pure game of bluff. It's closely related to simultaneous action games like Caribbean. You also find bluff as a game element in other games like Faidutti's own Citadels, but this is a rare game that uses the mechanic on its own.

The Game Design

There's not a lot to say about the design of Knock! Knock! because it's as simple as it sounds from this description.

You have some ability to guess what players are might play, because you see all of their later draws (thanks to the face-up draw pile), but you never know exactly what's in their hand. There's also some real ability to go after a leader. However, the game can also be quite random, and also dependent upon luck of the draw.

I generally measure Knock! Knock!'s success based upon the fact that it was very fun to play, and resulted in a lot of laughing and cursing. On that basis I've let it eke in a "4" out of "5" for Substance. Though extremely light, it's an above-average play.

Conclusion

Knock! Knock! is an ultra-light pure bluffing game. The core mechanics can result in a fair amount of randomness, but work well, and the resulting game is a lot of fun to play.