The best Similo box?

Similo is a brilliant little co-op deduction game. 🥰 It’s basically just a deck of cards depicting different characters - the version we are talking about now is Similo: The Lord of the Rings 💍, so it has all the people and creatures you might know and love from the books and movies! Of course there are many different sets, notably two that were handed out as free promos at SPIEL depicting the newest games from the show.

How does it work? 🧐 It’s very simple! The clue-giver takes 12 cards, randomly chooses one of them which will be the card the others have to successfully guess, then places the 12 cards face up on the table.
Now each round the clue-giver has to play a card from a hand of 5, to hint at what card(s) should be discarded. ☝️The first round is easy, as only one card is discarded. But then players have to discard 2, 3, then 4 cards, so at the last round there are only 2 cards remaining. If players discard the wrong card, the game is lost! It can be quite hard giving a clue in the 4th round that matches 4 cards you want others to discard. 😄

How people interpret the hints is up to them though. ❗ The clue-giver plays Saruman - do you then discard Gandalf because he’s a wizard? 🧙 Or Saruman is evil so you should look at other evil characters? 😈 Or is it the beard? 🧔 The background color? 🤔
Guesses can get wild, and this is why playing with more people will be more fun, because you can listen to the ensuing madness every round. 😅
It’s especially funny how some super obscure hints or guesses will become meta-knowledge, and used in later games.

Basically Similo gives you the gameplay experience and fun factor of games like Codenames or Mysterium, but with virtually no setup and a much smaller box. Whether you like such games or not, I think it’s worth giving Similo a look, because it really surprised us how much fun is packed in this small deck of cards. I also find the art style very endearing! 😊