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As someone who has a lot of friends who are non-gamers, trying to find a game that is light on rules but high on enjoyment is important. Essentially this is the purpose of party games – where the game ticks along at a gathering without consuming it. Hues and Cues sounded right up my street. It’s a game which uses a colour spectrum and players take it in turns to give one and then two-word clues to a certain hue on the board. The closer that players are, the more points they score, which in turn also gives the clue giver points. I won’t go too much into the rules, as you can read Gavin’s original review for that. The bigger question is whether I agree with him or not.
The general feeling I took from the original review is that the game is simple enough for non-gamers to play, easy enough to just tweak the rules slightly for families to enjoy, and it rattles along at a nice pace for the game to not outstay its welcome. I agree with all these points, and also think the component quality is very good. The scoring mechanism does a really good job of keeping the clue giver honest, and scoring is easily worked out with the robust frame.
One of the biggest laughs to come from the games I played was how easy it seems people can misinterpret the clues. For example, when playing a game over Christmas, I gave the clue “Barbie” hoping that everyone would be drawn the pink part of the board. The first placement was my dad, who went around the yellow part, and when asked afterwards, stated he did so because “Barbie is blonde.”
That said, I also think that the criticisms of the original review still stand, with one in particular being a recurring discussion with every play. If I had a penny for every time someone said “it looks different on the card than it does on the board,” I’d probably not have to work again… that may be a slight exaggeration, but the point is necessary. Whilst Gavin said that this could be addressed by a sly glance at the board, this could also give away the location of the square, which feels like the biggest problem.
I’d also argue that a further issue with the game is that everyone has to take two turns at being clue giver. Whilst this might not seem to be an issue for most, some people aren’t so keen on being put on the spot. This reluctance is why some people don’t like playing games – they don’t want to be the person that gives the rubbish clue or says something that’s outside of everyone’s frame of reference.
Final Thoughts
Maybe these things wouldn’t have been so noticeable when I played Hues and Cues with my family, but we’d played Herd Mentality and That’s Not a Hat either side of it. Both absolute laugh riots and honestly, out of the three, I think Hues and Cues would be the least likely to be brought back to the table in the future.
So whilst I think my opinion of Hues and Cues is less glowing than Gavin’s, I don’t think it’s a bad game. I just think that there are much better party games out there.
