How To Play Colorful

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!