LOQ: Describe and Guess Against the Clock!

LOQ is an exciting new party game that focuses on word guessing. I instantly thought about articulate when I saw this but there are a lot of significant differences which makes LOQ a definite game to pick up. Word games are not typically my thing unless it is the right word game, this one is.

First Impressions

The first thing that jumped out at me is how slick the box and cover art work look. It’s stunning. A relatively small back box with incredible artwork all within the imprinted lock. It looks awesome.

Then on opening the box there are literally hundreds of cards contained within it, making for thousands of words to guess in the game. This is only helpful for the replay ability for me.

The score board is of equal quality to the box for appeal on the eyes. You have a lock where the score board is printed on, up to 100 points on this tracker, it looks very cool. And as you will see if you read on, if you get close to 100 points you are doing incredibly well.

Gameplay

LOQ is for 2-20 people, yes you read that right, 20 people! You also have cooperative or competitive options. It is also a team-based game which is why you need at least 2 people (for co op) or 4 people is the minimum if you are going to play competitively. 2 teams of 2 players as the minimum. I never even thought such a game could be played cooperatively (it didn’t make sense to me) but that is the brilliance here. You don’t need a large “party” or group of people to be able to play this one. You can challenge the game and see how well you score. Or, arguably practice for the party game night.

The game is set into 10 rounds, then it is over with the highest score taking the win (or in cooperative play, checking to see how well you did against the creator’s standard). This 10 rounds is where this game is different to many other games I have played like it, where you need to get to the finish line. There is no line here, it is check your score and see where you ended up. So you know there is a definite end and with 45 second rounds prescribed by the in game egg timer, ever with 4 teams playing that means the maximum active play time is 30 minutes.

The other factor with these rounds is that they are all different. The round cards have different play conditions, no round being the same. One such condition is you are only allowed to use 3 words to describe a word. I struggle at times in articulate when I have all the words to use to describe a word, this round challenged me for sure. So this really does add to the challenge of the game which we’ve thoroughly enjoyed.

Winning Conditions

Each round you count up how many points you earned from the 45 seconds of play and move your cube along the score board (or score lock). Very simply the team with the most points at the end of round 10 takes the win. Keep in mind there are opportunities for bonus scores and additional points in each round.

Up The Ante

If you are reading this and thinking “wow that is challenging”, or that might be pretty easy. There are 4 colour banded difficulty levels. The words you are required to describe get harder with each tier. We’re still enjoying the bottom rung here.

Final Thoughts

What a treat of a game to get to play. I happened upon this by chance and now I have my own copy because it is that good. We’ve had so much fun playing LOQ and cannot wait to introduce it to more friends and family. It is unlike any other word game I’ve played and very much for the better. It has been awesome fun. If you are into word games I would suggest this is an absolute must for you, and if you are not like me, you will still enjoy it because there are plenty of laughs to be had in the game, it’s brilliant.