Review of Similo

Blurb from the publisher: 'A cooperative deduction game where your goal is to make the other players guess one secret character by playing other character cards from your hand as clues, stating whether they are similar to or different from the secret character.

You can also mix and match different versions by using one deck for the characters and the other for the Clues... will you guess which Greek god has something in common with Cleopatra, Caesar and Napoleon from Similo: History?'

What you get: Your EUR 9 or equivalent will buy you one of the six different flavours of Similo, a deduction-based cardgame, currently available on the market, namely Animals, Fables, History, Myths, Spookies, and Wild Animals. Each deck can nominally accommodate from two to eight players (even more actually), and lasts around 10 minutes. Decks are sold separately. No purchase is a prerequisite for another.

In addition to the 6-page mini-sized rulebook that can be found on the publisher's website free of charge, each version of the game includes 30 appropriately themed cards.

This is a combo review of all six Similo decks. Horrible Guild generously provided all of them. There is no shadow reviewing here.

Gameplay: Decks are thematic as expected. As an example, the Animals deck includes the dog, the hen and the beaver, the Myths deck includes Ares, Jason and Arachne, and so on and so forth. The cards are colourful with a fair mix of whimsy, comedy, and a lot of detail.

Like all coops, the game is won or lost collectively. One player, the Clue Giver, draws a card at random and secretly looks at it. This is the card that the other players, the Guessers, have to guess. The Clue Giver also draws 11 more cards, and out of those 12 cards creates a 4 x 3 grid on the table. He also draws an additional 5 cards and keeps them in his hand.

The game is played in five rounds. In each round the Clue Giver plays one of the cards in his hand. If he plays the card vertically, he means that something on this card is similar to the card the Guessers are looking for in the grid. If he plays it horizontally, something on the card is different. What exactly the similarity is however is any one's guess. It might be visual, thematic, conceptual etc. The Clue Giver cannot provide any additional verbal or visual clues. Once he plays a card, he draws another one so that he always has five available. All clues are cumulative, i.e. each of them is independently valid throughout the game.

Once a card has been played, the Guessers can discuss which cards to eliminate from the grid. Elimination follows a linear progression. On the first round they eliminate one card, on the second two cards, and so on and so forth until the fourth round. By the fifth round there are only 2 cards left (12 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4), thus the players eliminate one final card. If the final card left is the one the Clue Giver had drawn at the beginning of the game, they win. If at any previous point they eliminated that card, the game ends immediately and everybody loses.

Similo can be played with a single deck only, different decks however can be combined. In that case, one deck is used as the character deck and the other as the clue deck. In other words, the first twelve cards are drawn from one deck, while the cards granting the clues are drawn from the other.

The strong points: Remember Codenames and more particularly, Codenames Pictures, or the even longer Mysterium? Similo shares the theme, yet it is even easier to learn, explain, setup and play. There is nothing more to the rules than what you read here. Explain in under 30 seconds, play a full game in around five minutes, and off you go to the next play.

The game is all about associations, be them similar or different. The artwork is cute and cuddly, it is however also extremely detailed and serves its purpose to the hilt. An association can be one of many things, like the external characteristics of the character you are looking for like posture, expression, whether he has or doesn't have a particular feature (e.g. holding or not holding something) etc, the colours or designs on the background, deck-dependent thematic differences and many more. Different decks by nature focus on different things; the associations one makes when seeing historical figures are obviously different to the ones one makes when looking at protagonists in horror tales. Creative thinking is rewarded, as is the opportunity to read your audience and provide them not necessarily with objectively good suggestions, but with suggestions that they are likely to identify.

You might not need more than one deck to play, admittedly however the game gains a level when you use two. It is evident that decks work well in pairs, namely Animals/Wild Animals, Fables/Spookies, History/Myths. Yet, the game brings a surreal quality of entertainment when you combine Wild Animals with History, or Fables with Myths. It can't get more party-appropriate than this, since it is thoughtful enough to pose a challenge, yet light and happy enough not to feel imposed. When it comes to games of this type, Similo is by far the fastest and snappiest, Codename included.

I'd be hard-pressed to choose a single deck as my favourite. There is merit in each of them, and the company you have around you will determine which one comes out as more entertaining.

I already extolled the cards' design and how they make one likely to enjoy the game even if he is not a fan of such light-hearted experiences. Bonus points for the one line at the side of each card which exposes the creature at hand. Players get a starting point in case they don't know what a robin is, or Poseidon, or the three little pigs. Good thinking, for a game that tries to reach a global audience.

The boxes are sturdy. I was very positively surprised to see the cards inside an extractable cardboard frame which, lo and behold, allows you to sleeve them if you so wish and fit them back in the box without an issue. Most gamers might not bother to sleeve a party game, yet the gesture is more than appreciated. This makes transportation easier too. Similo is hosted in a box that can take some rough treatment, meaning that you can throw it haphazardly on your backpack and bring it along in trips.

The weak points: Similo's main issue, and one that becomes apparent a couple of plays in, is the depth of its decks. Simply put, each deck should have been bigger. In each game 21 out of the 30 cards will be used: the 11 + 1 that will be placed on a grid, and the 5 + 4 that will be picked by the Clue Giver in order to help his co-players. After a handful of games only, it feels that a very big chunk of the game has been explored. There is a lot of nuance and details in the design and the meta level, yet the feeling cannot be easily shaken away. In that sense, and no matter how short the game is, there is a finite amount of games you can play with one deck in a single session, potentially no more than three, before fatigue kicks in. The issue can be easily mitigated by using additional decks. Two decks are already a huge improvement, while from three decks onwards you can be assured that the game will never feel old. Taking the game's price into account, buying a handful of iterations is a still good deal.

The more players the better. Similo works with two players if you use it as an educational tool with kids, as a very fast diversion, or if you and your adult friend are adequately inebriated. In reality however the discussion and the thought process behind each guess is parts of its appeal. Three or four Guessers appears to be the sweet spot since, with more, all additional input gets lost in the noise.

Choose your decks in relation to whom you expect to play the game often with. History might not be the best deck if you have very young kids around since they won't be able to provide clues past appearance and card design, and the point of the game is much broader than visual profiling. If you use two decks at the same time, some combinations like Fables and Animals might come out as too surreal even for committed home brewers.

Conclusion: Similo is a niche game, yet it found exactly what it needs to do to be entertaining. It works great as a relaxed party game, as an intro to your otherwise heavier gaming session, as a fast, go-to family game, or as a game to lure non-gamers. Even though this is not a kids' game, younger ages might get additional entertainment out of it. I wouldn't be surprised if Horrible Guild published more decks for it in the future.

To find out more about Horrible Guild and Similo take a look at https://www.horribleguild.com.

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