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Intro
Pictionary, Drawful, Win Lose or Draw, Scrawl, Randomise… It’s easy to see why draw and guess games have stood the test of time and continue to evolve. But this is one with a thinky twist. The player drawing can only use straight lines (no curves) and can only use 15 of them.
It’s a simple premise but one which, in execution, walks the line perfectly between head scratching puzzle and joyously fun guessing game. The look on the faces of the drawing players thinking “How the hell am I going to draw that in 15 straight lines?!?” never gets old.
My nine year old daughter Kadie, who really loves this game, wanted to add her opinion about it as well. She has severe ADHD and this game is great for her because she loves drawing so much. I’ll add her opinion at the end in case you’re thinking of buying it for a child, especially if they’re neurodiverse and/ or love drawing.
Game Set Up
Kontour’s set up is very simple. Form a pile of object cards, decide which colour you’re going to read objects from and hand the first player the pad and pencil. You’re now ready to go.
Gameplay
Pass one card to the Drawing Player. They can choose to go for an “easy” object for one point or a “tricky” object for two points. Sometimes the two point objects seem easier or just as easy as the one point ones so often that’s the one the drawing player will go for. The Drawing Player draws the object using up to 15 straight lines. The Guessing Players have 30 seconds to guess the object, the first to guess correctly gets the one or the two points (depending on the object chosen) and the Drawing Player gets the same.
There are a couple of little extra rules like not being allowed to draw arrows or letters/ numbers to make it more of a challenge.
The next player gets to then take a card and choose an object to draw. The first to X amount of points wins the game. It could also be easily played as a team game with several groups of players on permanent teams battling it out rather than as individuals. That’s it. Kontour is very simple, with no set up time and plays in as little as 5-10 mins if you set the victory score quite low.
So Who Is This Game For?
It is a great game for families, older kids and teenagers will be able to play it easily. Younger kids might struggle to draw quickly while remembering to keep lines straight and counting to 15. It could be just a little too much multitasking for them. Aged 10+ is the official recommendation and if you were going to go younger than that, I’d consider a few rule changes. Letting younger players have a longer time limit, more than 15 strokes (say 20 or 25), and counting for them and stopping them when they’ve hit their limit so they can just concentrate on drawing could all work to expand the ages at which this game plays well.
As an adult game, it works really fantastically as either a warm up game or as a palette cleanser between more serious strategic games. The lightning fast set up time, play time and tiny box size makes it absolutely ideal for this sort of play.
So Who Is This Game Not For?
Very young kids, people who hate drawing and guessing games, people who would rather the simplicity and unstructured fun of regular pictionary.
Replayability
There are quite a few object cards that Kontour comes with and it’s definitely a game that you could make extra cards for pretty easily though if you got through all the objects and got tired of repeated ones. It should take a long while to get through the ones that are there though.
Final Thoughts From Me
This game goes into my “quick and simple smaller game to play between other games” category. It’s not going to be the highlight of your games night but for what it is and does, it’s perfect for a lot of people’s collection. It’s also great fun with older kids and I regularly play it with mine. If you’re on the fence and love draw & guess games, then consider grabbing Kontour. It’s decent fun at a great price.
Second Opinion From My 9 Year Old Daughter Kadie
Basically, I really like Kontour because it involves drawing and for people who love drawing, this would be really good. But it's pretty hard sometimes. I tried to draw a baby, but it looked terrible! 15 lines isn’t very many. But yeah, it's really fun and I would recommend it for, like, kids my age. I’m nearly 10!
The 30 second timer really makes it hard. I think a minute would be better. Maybe adults should have 30 seconds but just flip the timer twice for kids so they have longer to draw. It's really good anyway. I rate it five of five cos I actually love the game.
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