Game: Linkity

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lordzogat — 2007-06-23T04:48:41+00:00

Linkity Quick Rules

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lordzogat — 2007-06-23T04:48:19+00:00

Linkity Lady Bug Counters

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lordzogat — 2007-06-23T04:47:56+00:00

Linkity fresh out of the box.

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lordzogat — 2007-06-23T04:47:27+00:00

Linkity Card Art

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lordzogat — 2007-06-23T04:47:03+00:00

The rear side of the linkity box

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lordzogat — 2007-06-23T04:45:55+00:00

Linkity Books, rules and logs

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ArtEmiSa64 — 2007-03-19T18:47:37+00:00

http://simplyfun.com/products/linkity/

Thread: The game Carl Jung would have played...

Henry Rhombus — 2006-11-23T06:11:43+00:00

This review first appeared on FunandBoardgames.com.

If you've watched more than 20 picoseconds of a psychiatry session on television or in the movies, then you've seen a troubled soul going through a word association session. The psychiatrist presents the patient with a series of words ("Father," "tool shed," "hedge trimmers"), and the patient responds with the first thing that comes to mind ("domineering," "unbearably dark," "I confess, it was really me, I'm so ashamed!"). The idea is that the patient's mind, operating automatically and without forethought, will present the psychiatrist with the keys needed to unlock his troubled soul.

Game designers are crafty, if not necessarily troubled, souls, and Chris Handy has transformed the essence of word association into a quick-playing word game. Linkity comes with a 90-card deck, seven of which are dealt to players at the start of each of the three rounds, and a pile of point markers. The cards each have a single letter in the corners, along with a picture of a bug shaped like the letter.

A player is chosen randomly to open the round, and she throws out a letter card and says a single word that starts with that letter, say, "L" for "landmine." Each other player then races to play a letter card on top of the "L" and give a word associated with landmine that starts with their played letter, for example, "V" and "Vietnam." Once "V" is on the pile, each player other than the V-player raced to play a card: "S" for "southeast," "G" for "Georgia," "P" for "peaches," and so on.

If someone gives a two-word phrase or a word of questionable association with his letter card, another player can challenge the play. The game pauses for a moment, the challenging and challenged players can briefly present arguments, then players vote for whether the play was valid. The player who loses the challenge draws two cards (and picks up his originally played card, if the challenged player lost), then restarts the round by playing a card and giving a word. Words can't be repeated within a single round.

When a player runs out of cards, the round ends and players take one penalty point for each card in their hand. Repeat the process twice more, and whoever has the lowest score after three rounds wins.

As with many word games, Linkity can suffer from disparate play between those who have big vocabularies and those who don't know what "disparate" means. Open a round with "tumescence," for example, and half the people will stare at you and say, "James, what are you talking about?" Everyone has to work to keep the game at an appropriate level for all players.

Another issue is that players can easily fall into ruts. If someone names a color or gives the word "color," players will often take off on a ride over the rainbow, which gets rid of many cards from the hand but is boring after the third or eighth time. We lightly chastise players to head in more interesting and unique directions—although anyone who links "naked" to "Mom" will likely be viewed as a bit too unique.

The bug theme is somewhat puzzling. The publisher probably felt they needed a cute way to sell the game because otherwise they're pitching a deck of cards and a few cardboard scoring markers. They still are, of course, but at least they now have pictures of bugs on them.

Bugs or no bugs, Linkity is a fun quick game that goes over well with both strangers and friends—and if you do learn a bit more about someone in the process, don't hold it against them. Just quietly call the police and stall until they arrive.

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tal-game — 2006-03-31T18:14:20+00:00

Thread: [SR] GSG 6/21

Spielfreak — 2005-06-23T20:10:37+00:00

LINKITY: James, Eric, Steve, Phil, Berna, Mark, Richard

This is a card game where each card has a single letter and the deck consists of 80 cards. There are a total of three rounds. The player with the highest score leads a card and states a word that starts with the played letter. Then in real time, each player attempt to play a card and state a word that somehow relates (links) to the previous word. Players attempt to get rid of their cards, but cannot play successive cards. The round ends as soon as one player is out of cards. Each player receive 1 pt for each card left in their hand, and the player with the lowest aggregate score after three rounds is the winner. Plays may be challenged; if this happens, a vote is taken, and if the majority reject the play then the card is taken back, the offender draws two more cards, the stack of played cards is set aside, and the offender starts a new batch. If the majority agree, then play simply resumes at that point.

I wish there was some way of recording the word linkages while playing, but play is too fast and furious to support this aim. Both James and Eric are insanely quick at this game! Eric won the first round, while James won the last two rounds and took the win. I got stuck with two J’s during the second round, and focused on trying to get rid of them instead of the other 5 or 6 cards in my hand (how many cards do we each get, anyway?) I’m a step too slow for this game, especially after my brain turns off at night. I played ‘M’ for milk, as someone had played ‘D’ for drink, but Mark beat me by playing ‘S’ for slurpy. My fellow gamers deemed that milk is not slurpy, so I had to take more cards. Richard tried to play ‘N’ for neuro-rat (after ‘R’ for rat), and that was also rejected. However, I succeeded in playing ‘F’ for frappe after Berna had played ‘C’ for cabinet (which was in response to ‘F’ for file) – you gotta love RI terminology (for those who are clueless, cabinet and frappe are both alternative names for milkshake). This was a very fun game that I’d like to try again when I’m more awake. Oh, and I apologize for yelling out my answers; I guess the pressure and success of thinking got to me.

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ChrisHandy — 2005-02-17T12:58:20+00:00

"Linkity" box and contents

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acmedude — 2005-01-27T16:10:02+00:00

Box cover